Lunar New Year is one of the most important celebrations of the year among many East and Southeast Asian cultures, including Chinese, Vietnamese, Korean, Malaysian, Filipino communities and more. The current Lunar Year ends in early February.
Each year in the Lunar calendar is represented by one of 12 zodiac animals and 2023 has been the year of the rabbit!
We'll tee up ways to celebrate the lunar New Year in our February calendar, and you can start to help kids learn more about Lunar New Year with great children’s books like Bringing In the New Year by Grace Lin, Ruby’s Chinese New Year by Vickie Le, and Our Lunar New Year by Yobi Qiu.
And, in honor of the lunar year about to end, try some of our favorite ways to help kids learn about and play like rabbits!
This activity is featured as part of our January Calendar. Click to get your free copy and sign up to get a fresh, new calendar each month!
The Guide
Learn about rabbits!
Learn more about Eastern Cottontail Rabbits from National Geographic Kids here. Or, better yet, watch bunnies in action! Fortunately, over half of the world’s bunny population resides in North America. Rabbits live in meadows, forests, wetlands, grasslands and even deserts. If you have a garden, you may know all too well that there are bunnies around. Popular prey, rabbits spend most of the day underground. They are most active early and late in the day, especially along the fringes of fields and roadside cover, where thick vegetation provides relatively safe feeding.
Bonus activity—Make a puppet!Click here to download and print a snowshoe hare puppet kids can decorate and interact with. We've included some suggested ways to move like snowshoe hares and lyrics to the Come to Tinkergarten snowshoe har verse, too!
Then, try any of these ways to inspire kids to play like rabbits:
Play rabbit games!
Try out some playful games designed to help kids think and move like rabbits. The whole family will have fun and as kids take on the perspective of rabbit friends, they'll build their cognitive empathy, too! Add new rules to any of these games or invite your child to make up their own rabbit game for the family to play.
“Hop”stacle course (any # of players): Place a variety of nature treasures in a straight line or a zig-zag pattern on the ground. At the end of the path, place a string or make a circle shape with nature treasures. Invite kids to hop along the trail to safety in the rabbit hole.
Freeze and Hop (any # of players): The leader yells “Hop!” and everyone hops until the leader yells “freeze.” When frozen, players stay as still as they can to camouflage in to their surroundings. Extra challenge: all players need to hop in a circle, a zig-zag or from point A to point B.
Bunny, Bunny, Fox! (4+ players): Just like Duck, Duck, Goose, but the child who taps heads is a bunny. Child says, "Bunny" each time until they tap someone as “Fox!” The “fox” chases around the circle and back to their seat.
Build a hare-y-hideout!
Challenge kids to build a safe hideout for a bunny, using a stuffed animal or bunny sized object as a model.
Set up the challenge: Grab a stuffed animal and suggest, “Let’s pretend this is a real bunny. And, let's say it’s getting late in the day. A hungry fox is on his way. What could happen to the bunny? What kind of hideout would a bunny like to have to escape from the fox? What kind of home or hideout can we build for this bunny to keep it safe?"
Set criteria: Chat a bit to generate a list of the criteria needed for a good house. Some examples: big enough to fit the bunny; easy for the bunny to get in and out of; bunny can’t be seen from the outside; withstands wind, rain, etc.
Build your hideout: Help kids gather materials and offer teamwork as feels supportive as they build their hideout for rabbit. Three approaches that kids in Tinkergarten classes have used:
Use the hole in the bottom of a tree and cover it with branches, greens, etc.
Make a small lean-to against a tree using sticks covered with leaves and grasses.
Dig a hole and build a stick and mud roof over the hole
Go on a camo hunt!
The color of rabbits’ fur helps them to camouflage with their environment and keep safe from predators. Try this activity to help kids playfully explore the concept of camouflage.
Set up the hunt: Gather some pieces of cut string (6-8 inches long each) in vibrant colors (pink, purple, teal, yellow, orange, etc.) and in the colors of nature (i.e. browns and greens). Place equal amounts of each type of yarn in your outdoor space. Sprinkle strands on the ground, hang them on tree limbs or on low plants, peeking out of logs, etc.
Hunt for the yarn: Ask kids if they notice anything. Assuming they’ll notice the yarn (if not, point it out), give them time to hunt for the yarn. After a few minutes of hunting, invite kids to show you what they found. Wonder which colors of yarn they found more of.
Prompt thinking: Wonder, “Why do you think you found more bright colored yarn than green/brown yarn?" Give kids a chance to share their ideas and then introduce the idea that colors that are similar to the colors outside camouflage or blend in, making them difficult to see. Wonder how a rabbit’s fur might help it to camouflage in to its environment. Do the hunt again and welcome kids to hide the yarn for you to find.
Why is this activity great for kids?
At Tinkergarten, we know that some of kids' most meaningful learning happens during play. In these playful activities, kids learn about concepts like predator/prey relationships and rabbit adaptations like camouflage, speed, and zig-zagging. Taking on the perspective of rabbits through play supports empathy for other creatures. If your family celebrates Lunar New Year, this could be a nice activity for kids to do alongside whatever you do to prepare for the Lunar New Year to come. If you do not celebrate, it could be a nice way to learn about the holiday—a wonderful way to help children learn to value all people, even those different from themselves.
Imagination is defined in many ways, but one we like is, "the act or power of forming a mental image of something not present to the senses or never before wholly perceived in reality." This is no small task to little kids, and yet young childhood is a time in which imagination is developed more than any other. How does imagination develop in childhood? Through an increasingly sophisticated life of make believe.
We all likely have a sense of what we mean by make believe or good old "pretend play." How do experts define it, though? To some, there are different types of make believe that vary in sophistication and make pretend play different than other types of play. For example, kids may use objects to represent something else (e.g. a block becomes a cell phone). Or, they may start to give an object certain properties (e.g. a doll is asleep or a tree is on fire!). Still yet, they may themselves take on the properties of someone or something else.
From there, pretend play evolves into acting out scenarios or stories, those getting increasingly intricate as imagination develops. As kids' pretend play grows more sophisticated, these stories come to involve not only the creative use of objects, but multiple perspectives (e.g. good and bad guys in the same story), and/or the playful manipulation of ideas and emotions (e.g. I am sad, but then become happy after I save the village from certain doom).
Why does it matter?
An ever growing body of research substantiates the many benefits of pretend play including the enhanced development of: language and communication skills; self-control and empathy; flexible and abstract thinking; and creativity. These are the skills that will help kids balance emotions, form healthy relationships, work effectively on teams, stay focused in school, be successful at various jobs and solve the problems of an increasingly complicated world. An individual's creativity in particular, both requires and is limited by her imagination.
Problem Solving
Category:
Thinking Skills
What are Problem Solving Skills?
When we talk about problem solving, we mean the ability to solve a problem in which the solution is not obvious and in which the possible paths to solution are many. To solve such problems, kids will need two things. First, they’ll need the self confidence and comfort to both attempt to find and persist in finding a solution. The only way to develop this is to be given the chance to struggle with ambiguous situations or open-ended problems. We parents are all guilty, from time to time, of helping kids avoid struggle or swooping in to alleviate frustration when our kid encounters challenge. The goal is actually to do the opposite whenever possible. As long as the problem is not too difficult to understand or challenging to solve, even young kids can get comfortable with the feeling of not knowing the solution and fall in love with the joy of finding a solution to a problem.
Kids also need strategies to attack problems with which they are faced. If adults are able to work with kids to solve problems “as a team” but in such a way that the children feel and act “in charge” of the decisions, adults can actually teach foundation problem solving skills and strategies through modeling. For example, when you solve a problem together, kids get practice with key parts of the process like brainstorming, testing ideas, revision and solution. It’s also pretty easy to model how to use simple strategies like trial and error or breaking a problem down into smaller parts. Although children age 1 to 7 should not be expected to name, catalog or identify when to use a particular problem solving strategy, they are able to form habits and repeat approaches once those habits or approaches have become familiar. The more problems they solve, the better they know and can use these methods.
Why does it matter?
“The highest ranked skills for students entering the workforce were not facts and basic skills; they were applied skills that enable workers to use the knowledge and basic skills they have acquired” (Source: Are They Really Ready for Work? Conference Board 2006).
Although it seems a long way to go before our young children are hitting the job market, the ability to solve challenging, ambiguous problems has already been identified as a critical skill for success in the 21st Century. With advances in technology, finding information has never been easier. However, knowing how to interpret a problem and use available information to devise a solution still needs to be learned. And, we fear that the classrooms of today are neither designed nor incentivized to teach these skills effectively. In most schools, so much time is spent learning discrete skills, that applied skills like problem solving are wildly underemphasized. In a world that demands it, it is increasingly necessary that children learn and practice these skills outside of school.
Empathy
Category:
Social Skills
What is Empathy?
Simply put, empathy is the ability to think and care about the feelings and needs of others. The good news is, the more we study, it appears that children are empathetic by nature. All we need to do is nurture it in them—that of course is now always easy. Even though young children are simply working on gaining control over their emotions and won’t learn to really think about their emotions and the cause and effect of their behavior on others until their school years, they can start to develop the foundation for empathy much earlier. Taking actions (and watching adults take actions) that benefit other people, caring for animals and their environment and even just wondering how other people or creatures are feeling helps build both positive habits and a strong base for the development of empathy.
Why does it matter?
Empathy is at the root of what psychologists call “pro-social” behavior—behavior that people must develop in order to develop a conscience, build close relationships, maintain friendships, and develop strong communities. Empathy also helps kids avoid bullying, one of the most worrisome social challenges young kids face. Being able to think and feel for others can keep kids from becoming either bully or victim and equip them to stand up for others who are bullied. Imagine if all kids had such tools!
Age: 0 to 8+
Time: 1 hour+
Materials: various household and natural objects
