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Chinese Party -8yr- Pin the Fan on Mulan

March 2006

Jane in East Fallowfield, PA USA

Special Mention

It is that time of year again.  It was time to choose a theme for my daughters 8th Birthday.  We were tossing around ideas and we came to an idea of a Chinese New Year Birthday Party.  My daughter received a few Christmas ago a Chinese dress.  So I figured she could wear it the day of the party and I would put chopsticks in her hair.  Then I found out Chinese New Year was on January 29 and lasted 20 days.  Being her birthday was in February we scheduled the party for February 12.  That way it was during Chinese New Year.  She had a total of 24 guests come to her party.   

The first thing we did was while waiting for the guests to arrive, I gave out to the kids a Chinese New Year Zodiac Word Jumble.  When everyone arrived we did a craft.  We made Chinese lanterns.  I got the craft kit from Oriental Trading Company.  After they finished the craft the kids all lined up to take a picture with the Birthday girl.  Later that week they would receive the picture in their thank you card. 

After that we played pin the fan on Mulan.  I blew up a coloring page of Mulan and pasted it on poster board.  I painted a background of a cherry blossom tree, a sunset and a little temple.  I then made fans out of embossed scrapbook paper and ribbon.  The next game I combined 2 games.  Pass the dragon to the Mulan Soundtrack.  It played like hot potato.  As the child got out they played a charades game called Fortune Cookie says.  I made a giant fortune cookie out of 2 yellow poster boards and made a giant circle and folded it into a fortune cookie.  Inside the fortune cookie was rectangular cards with curling ribbon at the end and had a picture of a Chinese zodiac animal and name.  There are only 12 zodiacs so there were duplicates.  Each kid picked a card and everyone had to guess what animal they were acting out. 

We then had cake.  The cake had a picture of a dragon.  The picture was from a scanned napkin from the party.  Surrounding the cake were cupcakes with plastic dog figures all different breeds.  The reason why dogs were put on the cupcakes was because it was the year of the dog. 

For snacks we had peeled clemintines, pineapple and bananas, Chinese noodles to dip in duck sauce, Oriental trail mix and fortune cookies. 

After cake and snacks we played another game.  The kids went Koi fishing.  I placed a blue plastic table cloth on the ground and threw 144 assorted color goldfish key chains on it.  The kids each took turns fishing with a homemade bamboo fishing pole with a magnet tied at the end.

The next game we did a Tangram relay race.  A tangram is a Chinese 7 shape puzzle.  Each kid was put into 3 separate teams.  They had to make a shape of a dog following an outline picture. 

After that we did a dragon dance with authentic Chinese New Year Celebration music.  I made a dragon head out of balloons, cardboard, paper mache and mold magic clay for the details.  I then made a 20 ft. long material patchwork body.  I sewed tassels, glued ribbons and feathers.  My daughter and son held the dragon head by 2 wrapping paper poles and each kid went underneath 2 by 2 and went around the house twice. 

After that we did the pinata.  I took a round circle pinata with yellow fringe on its side and glued solid red wrapping paper circles to cover the original picture and glued a dragon napkin to it.  It looked like it came with the rest of the theme party decorations.  Inside the pinata were plastic sandwich bags with stickers of dogs and fire crackers and each child's name on it.  Inside each bag was Chinese candy, dog bone candy, fruit streamers, starbursts, lollipops and dog stickers. 

As the kids were leaving they each received a goody bag filled with a dog bookmark, fortune cookie, Chinese rice cookies, fan, Chinese finger traps, Chinese noise maker, Chinese new year pencil, dragon pick puppet, Chinese red envelope with the story of the Ang Pow with plastic new year coins inside, Chinese New Year zodiac placemat (I bought from a Chinese Restaurant), Chinese bear sticker paper doll, Tangram puzzle ( I made out of poster board and gave 8 puzzles on a page and solutions) in a dragon bag and chopsticks. 

The bags were white medium size craft bags with Red and Black stamps saying thank you friend Chinese characters in left and right corner and the child's name was in the middle with Chinese good luck symbols on each side of the name. 

For decorations I laid the dragon on 2 sets of stairs (that way no one was allowed upstairs to get in trouble) I attached to the spindles dog stuffed animals.  The larger dog stuffed animals were on the upper part of the stairs.  I had a Chinese New Good Luck curtain blocking the door way of the steps.  I had Chinese lantern garland on the sliding glass door, Chinese New Year Character pictures throughout the house.  I had an accordion dragon attached to the wall and hug Chinese Calendars throughout the house. I also put dragon pinatas as decoration on the stair banister.

This party also allowed my brownie girl scouts to receive an International Fair patch as well.  The party was from 2:00pm to 4:30pm and we all had a celebration to remember.

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