This month we have a simple craft to keep those little hands busy over the Lunar New Year holiday: making hong baos, or red packets. Maybe your child won’t be filling their hong bao with money to give away this new year, but they will enjoy creating their own decorative envelope to store other treasures.
How to: You can help your child to print the template and provide them with scissors, glue or tape, and crayons or markers to decorate. For younger children, you can help guide them to fold along the lines and apply the glue. For older children you may consider letting them try to make their own hong bao without the template after they successfully make it once with the template for an extra creative challenge.
Here is an option for the template.
Montessori tips: Montessori work relies on clear workspaces. Instead of providing all the materials at once, build the hong bao in stages and clean up in between the cutting, gluing and decorating.
Conversation starter ideas: Hong bao are usually red colored for good luck in Chinese culture, do you have a favorite or lucky color? Hong baos are usually given as gifts in the new year, what would you want to give a friend for the new year?
And finally, if you don’t speak Mandarin, this is a chance to learn some with your children. Here is a link for learning how to say Happy New Year!
