Chinese New Year Classroom Goodie Bag Ideas plus Printable Chopstick Race Game

Thank you to Oriental Trading Company for providing Chinese New Year goodie bag items for this project.  All opinions expressed are our own.

Chinese New Year comes early this year!  Since our twins' birthdays fall in late January, I thought it would be fun to make Chinese New Year-themed goodie bags to send in for their classrooms.  I had a few ideas, but thought that I might have trouble finding enough items to fill our goodie bags.  I had no idea that Oriental Trading Company's Chinese New Year party supplies & decorations section would have so many classroom-friendly goodie bag options.

One of the ideas I had was to create a fun game the students could play during indoor recess.  Looking through the items on Oriental Trading sparked an idea to make a game using chopsticks.  It's super-easy to make.  Here's what you'll need . . .

Chopstick Race Game

SUPPLIES NEEDED:

Mini Lucky Money Goody Bags

Decorated Wood Chopsticks

Mini Insect Erasers

Chopstick Race Printable (Below)

The object of the game is to pick up the various insects up with the chopsticks and move them one at a time to the jar.  These cute little insect erasers from Oriental Trading Company were the perfect size to use for this game.  The students can race against each other or try to beat their own best time.  It's a fun way to master the art of using chopsticks.

TO PRINT: Make sure your printer is on and ready to go.  Click on the image below to enlarge.  Then right-click on the image and select print.  Use your browser's back arrow to return to this page.

Clipart from 1001FreeDownloads.com

I found lots of fun things to include in these Chinese New Year goodie bags, but it occurred to me that some of them may seem random to the children.  This led to my making a basic label to attach to the outside of each bag.  If you're making a goodie bag like ours, then you can print these labels below.  Now the children will understand which items were included in the bag because they're considered symbols of good luck.

What's in our Chinese New Year goodie bags?

• (1) Chopstick Race Game
• (1) Laminated Jumbo Chinese Zodiac Bookmark
• (2) Chinese Zodiac Pencils
• (1) Fortune Cookie Eraser
• (3) Colorful Goldfish
• (3) Chinese New Year Goldtone Coins
• (1) Chinese New Year Sticker

To complete the presentation, I pasted a printable label to the outside of each bag.  I opted for brown paper lunch bags because they were the perfect size to hold the larger items, and they fit our label perfectly.  After filling each bag, I just folded the top of the bag down twice, holding it in place with a Chinese New Year sticker.  The stickers came in a roll of 100, so I had enough to include one inside and one on the outside of each goodie bag.

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What other ideas do you have for celebrating Chinese New Year in the classroom?  Share them with us in a comment here.


Check out our other ideas for classroom-friendly goodie bags . . .