In the midst of a busy week (and next week is the same) the girls and I thought we would revisit China and spend some time exploring Chinese New Year. We’ve not ‘done’ it for ages, certainly not so that Amelie or Josie would remember, so doing some finding out and crafting seemed a good idea.

I’m always a bit disappointed by what is on the web for this festival, in fact, I think the MuddlePuddle pages are still some of the best, though in urgent need of a do over. Still, we didn’t let that get in the way of a good art ad craft session, so I read bits out to them and they crafted. We resorted to our stock Hama beads and Fimo media, but we do have some paper things to do next week (And food, food always good!)

Amelie was very taken with the Chinese dragons she saw on Google images and made this, altering the shape subtly by taking a line off the bod of the dragon pegboard. Worked really well. The colours apparently only happened like that because we kept running out of beads but it works beautifully I think.

Maddy did her own Chinese Dragon (Lion?)…

and then got interested in the Chinese ‘Year’ animals, so made a snake.

Fran had a go at a Chinese Flag in Hama Beads (tricky, i think I might try one of my own…)

Fran decided she wanted to make some “Year of the…£ plaques, so made a dog and a rabbit. Or possibly a rabbit and a dog. She wasn’t quite sure either

I’d printed off some tangrams, and Fran and I got taken by the idea of making them in beads too. We each made an approximation of how they look in a square formation…

and then got quite fascinated by how hard it was to do perfectly on a grid (annoying blunt end triangles and wobbly, not perfect sides) and she started trying to make a set of pieces that would work perfectly as an actual set of tangrams. We haven’t actually concluded if that is a yes or no yet, the picture blow have some of her draft pieces and she’s still refining them. It’s been really interesting watching her try; reminds me of some GCSE maths projects I did at school. (I’d quite like to find some of those for her to try, I think she’d like them.)

Then there were some people in ‘Chinese’ outfits (at least I can say they had looked at traditional cultural colours )

The craft of the day was probably these plaques, by Maddy. They had all really enjoyed working out what ‘year’ they were born in. Fran was very pleased to discover Freddie was also a tiger, like she is. The spent ages trying to see if they were like the animal and deciding if they believed it or not

Maddy made these for each person – I think they are all, but especially the dragon and monkey, completely amazing. I’m jealous