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Chinese New Year -7yr- Pin the Flame on Dragon

February 2002

Karen in St. Charles, MO USA

Last year when my son turned 7 he wanted a Chinese New Year party b/c he was learning about it at school.  After careful planning we pulled off a party that the kids loved!

I wore a kimono to greet all of the children as they arrived.  I even found my son a t-shirt with a Chinese dragon on it. 

I baked a cake and placed paper Chinese dragons on it as well as other colorful decorations that looked like sparklers. We also served up some fortune cookies! 

For decorations we hung Chinese lanterns throughout the house and hung a large Chinese dragon with a crepe paper slinky in the middle.  I found all of these items at a local party supply store. 

For games and crafts I had to be very creative, but we ended up coming up with several ideas to keep the kids busy.  I found a large paper dragon and then cut out a red "flame" out of construction paper which we used to  played Pin the Flame on the Dragon.

I also looked up the Chinese version of each child's name on the Internet and copied them off so they were able to write their names in Chinese.  They played charades by acting out the "year" that they were born i.e. year of the dog, year of the rabbit, etc. 

We also played a game where they raced each other to see how many cotton balls they could pick up with chopsticks and get into a cup.  To settle the kids down right before they went home I had them make necklaces with a Chinese coin medallion.  I also had the movie Mulan and a set of Chinese checkers available just in case we needed something extra to do. 

For the goody bags I bought Chinese take out boxes and filled them with a set of chopsticks, a fortune cookie, Chinese hard candy that I bought at an International food store and Chinese finger traps as well as their necklaces. 

I was unsure how I was going to plan such a party, but in the end I think I had just as much fun planning it as they did enjoying the end result.  Almost 6 months after the party I had a little party goer come up to me and ask me where I got those chopsticks b/c he had just broken his.  I couldn't believe that he was still using them.

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