At home, our family had our usual hotpot dinner - thinly sliced beef and lamb, fried fish and cuttlefish balls, tofu, fish-skin dumplings, cabbage and Paul's favorite winter vegetable - similar to dandelion leaves - called tong hao. At the end we cooked noodles for longevity in the delicious soup made from cooking all the food.
At school, I made up a unit to teach about CNY. The students learned about traditional customs and the 12-animal zodiac cycle and filled out a worksheet about their zodiac animal as well as completing other activities written activities. We watched a video and read a book about the holiday, and made lots of decorations including dragons, fireworks and spring blossoms on a tree for the hallway bulletin board; bowls of oranges, calligraphy and lanterns for the classroom. For cooking, we made tang yuan (chewy glutinous rice dumplings) in a sweet gingery soup, but we made a Western tweak to the recipe stuffing them with chocolate instead of sesame or red bean paste. They were quickly devoured!
