Tips for planning a children's Chinese New Year party

Chinese New Year is one of the more significant and fun holidays celebrated in Chinese culture. During this holiday, you can find family and friends getting together to have a great time. Throwing a Chinese New Year party and including kids is important for passing on the key traditions of the Chinese culture. Even if your family is not of Chinese descent, you can still have a great time while teaching your children about the significant traditions of other cultures.

• Red rules the day on Chinese New Year, so make sure you get some red invitations.
• Ask your smaller guests to wear the colour red in a creative way, and include a section in the invitation that lets them know you will give prizes for the most creative costume.

• Kids will have a blast decorating for this party!
• You can do pre-decorating by hanging easy-to-make paper chains.
• During the party, guests can make their own paper dragons to hang from string around the party area.
• You can also have the kids make easy Chinese paper lanterns, which are a must to add to the excitement and to really make it seem like Chinese New Year in your party area.

• No party is complete without themed food.
• To cater to the Chinese New Year theme, make sure the food is served with chopsticks and topped off with fortune cookies.
• Give fruit roll-up fortune cookies a try; the kids get to write their own message for each cookie and give it to a friend.
• Something fun that involves food made into a game would be a lo mein transfer. Colour cooked lo mein noodles red and put them in a Chinese take-out box. Have kids use chopsticks to transfer the noodles from box to a nearby bowl to see how they do.

• Gifts of coins in red envelopes are often given on this day, so buy or make some red envelopes so that you can have the kids put chocolate coins in them to give to their friends.
• Something fun to tire the tykes out and get them moving to music would be to have them watch a dragon dance and try to recreate it.
• Chinese New Year can be a great teaching opportunity and all-around fun time when you get the kids involved.
• Here's to a terrific Chinese New Year party.