Ideas For Celebrating Chinese New Year In The Classroom

Cultural holidays are a great opportunity to engage your class in learning about the world. Here you will find lots of ideas for turning the upcoming Chinese New Year into a fun learning opportunity. It’s one of the most widely recognised festivals in the world, with nearly a fifth of the world celebrating in some way, from China to Indonesia to the UK!

What Is Chinese New Year?

Every year, the Chinese New Year falls between the 21st of January and the 20th of February, on the second new moon following the Winter Solstice. The Chinese New Year celebrates the beginning of a new year on the lunisolar calendar, a traditional calendar dictated by moon phases. Although the majority of China used the Gregorian calendar, the traditional alternative still charts national holidays and occasions.

Chinese people celebrate by cleaning their homes, reuniting with family, cooking special meals, decorating their homes with traditionally red decorations and gifting red envelopes and other presents. Families watch elaborate lion dances, fireworks and release lanterns. The celebration is intended to wash away the past year and invite happiness, prosperity and health in the year to come.

WHY CELEBRATE CHINESE NEW YEAR IN THE CLASSROOM?

Chinese New Year is one of the most widely celebrated cultural festivals in the world and provides an engaging topic to explore, with rich historical, cultural and spiritual elements. It can be especially meaningful for pupils with Chinese or Asian heritage, while supporting a more inclusive learning environment for all learners. At the same time, it offers plenty of scope for fun, creative lessons with learning opportunities across a wide range of subjects.

THE CHINESE ZODIAC

This year’s celebration welcomes the Year of the Fire Horse (火马年), a dynamic and relatively rare sign within the 60-year Chinese zodiac cycle. It symbolises energy, bold action, and transformation.

Historically, horses were central to ancient Chinese society, playing a vital role in transportation, agriculture, and military life. This importance elevated the horse to a lasting cultural symbol of power and resilience. In Chinese tradition, the horse represents strength, speed, freedom, and perseverance.

You can find out what each zodiac year symbolises here.

LESSON IDEAS

There are so many ways you can bring a touch of the New Lunar Year festival to your classroom!

• Decorate your halls with red paper lanterns and themed decorations. Younger children will enjoy making simple lanterns, while older pupils can try their hand at traditional Chinese origami. Lantern-making is a particularly engaging activity, and pupils can design lanterns themed around the Horse or decorate them with Chinese characters and lucky symbols.
• Compare the traditional lunar calendar with the Gregorian calendar. The differences between the two make excellent discussion points across key stages.
• Planning a Chinese New Year celebration allows pupils to explore many of the festival’s elements, from traditional foods to parades and fireworks. You could even sample foods commonly associated with Chinese New Year. Local Asian markets often have suitable ingredients, and discussing the meanings behind each dish adds cultural depth. Encourage pupils to try using chopsticks too.
• Create a Fire Horse artwork using paint or mixed materials. Red, orange, and gold can be used to represent luck and the fire element, encouraging both creativity and symbolic understanding.
• Cultural festivals offer rich opportunities for arts and crafts. Try writing Chinese characters with feathers and ink to develop fine motor skills in younger pupils and promote language awareness in older ones. Replicating traditional imagery such as dragons, tigers, or landscape scenes works well across all key stages and creates eye-catching displays.
• Try making these Chinese New Year kites with Crayola.
• Maths and geometry lessons can incorporate ancient Chinese games such as tangrams. Pupils can cut out their own shapes or explore an online version.
• Chinese proverbs provide engaging material for language and comprehension lessons, and lucky money envelopes can be made using a simple folding guide.
• Either make your own, or get your class involved in making lucky money envelopes with this simple folding guide.
• Geography and History lessons can explore China’s size, population, geography, government, and culture, offering a broad and fascinating context for learning.
• Get active by asking your class to create their own Chinese Dragon Dance. There are some fun ideas and a lesson plan with learning objectives available here!
• Reading traditional Chinese folktales or zodiac legends helps pupils understand how the animals earned their place in the zodiac. Follow up with comprehension questions or creative retelling tasks.
• Learning simple Chinese phrases and terms could spark an interest in learning Chinese. Greet your class with “Gong hei fat choy“, which translates from Cantonese as “Congratulations and best wishes for a prosperous New Year” then look up more to share with your class.

MOre online resources

With so much teacher-created content available online, finding high-quality, classroom-ready resources can be a challenge. These trusted platforms offer well-reviewed materials to support teaching around Chinese New Year:

• BBC Teach. A wide range of downloadable resources, videos and podcasts, including a particularly strong Chinese New Year Assembly Pack.

• Eduzone. Free downloads and guidance for creating Chinese New Year worksheets, especially suitable for younger pupils.

• Activity Village. Chinese Zodiac worksheets, games and quizzes that work well across multiple key stages.

• LearningMole. Provides hands-on activities and lesson inspiration across subjects like crafts, storytelling and cultural exploration.

• Pinterest. A useful source of quick craft, recipe and decoration ideas. We also share fresh classroom inspiration on our Pinterest boards for teachers and educators.