8 Creative Ways To Bond With Your Kids This Chinese New Year

8 ways to bond with your kids this Chinese New Year

For Chinese all over the world, the Chinese New Year is the celebration of the year, a time for happy reunions among family and friends.

Your enthusiasm for it, though, might be fading just a bit year after year. You’d rather pack your bags and escape that long weekend. No spring-cleaning, no entertaining, no fussing over reunion dinners.

But remember how you loved Chinese New Year as a child? As a parent, you have to share your heritage with your kids and make the most out of it, no matter the stress that comes with preparing for it.

This Chinese New Year, bring the focus back to spending quality time with your family. Here are 8 ways to bond with your kids during the festive season:

1. Clean with a spin

Who like chores? Nobody. So why not make it a fun activity?

Here are a few suggestions:

Play "Follow the leader"

Organise a cleaning squad and give each member an apron, an old rag, a bottle of cleaning liquid. Assign a leader who will take the cleaning squad dusting, wiping, and scrubbing from room to room. Change the leader after each room.

Finders, Keepers

Let your children keep the trinkets or money that they find abandoned in forgotten corners of the house. Be generous, and hide some goodies and coins and notes before the cleaning.

Jazz it up with music

Move your body, shake you’re hips, and together, sing and dance your way to a tidier house. Forget the tacky Chinese New Year songs, though, and make a song list that will appeal to the young ones.

More tips on bonding with kids during Chinese New Year on the next page.

2. Bake goodies together

Every family seems to have a secret recipe for a Chinese New Year favourite. Be it pineapple tarts, almond cookies, Kueh Bangkit or Kok Chye, why not rope in the grandparents and get them to teach the secret family recipe?

Baking Chinese New Year goodies is a great activity for the whole family. It’s no fun baking alone this season, especially considering how many treats have to be baked. From shopping for ingredients to packing and cleaning up, there is so much for everyone to do.

The best part of it? Sampling the freshly baked goodies. Before they munch their way and finish up all the goodies, your children will probably appreciate the effort behind all the baking and the time spent with you, their cousins, and their grandparents.

3. Go for a homey family reunion

Why flock to popular restaurants for reunion dinners? And forget about splurging on over-the-top reunion dinners in fancy restaurants! As the saying goes, "Families that eat together, stay together".

Reunion dinners are about the importance of spending family time together and having everyone back home. Make this year’s reunion dinner a meaningful one by getting everyone involved, including the children, in preparing dishes for the family.

Help the tiny chefs in your family by adapting recipes from recipe books or dish out child-friendly recipes that are readily available on the Internet. Help them pick out recipes that they can manage on their own.

Don’t just stop at preparing the dishes. Involve your children in setting up the table. Get them to decorate a centerpiece for the table, using flowers, tangerines, gold coins, and floating red and gold coloured candles.

4. Make special fortune cookies

Your visitors will be charmed by the special fortune they will receive, handwritten by your children. Although not a Chinese New Year tradition, these fortune cookies will soon be staples once they start appearing in your household.

5. Make personalised red packet envelopes

Yes, we get them for free these days, but how special would it be to be giving out red packets with the signature design of the family?

As a family, design a meaningful family emblem that symbolizes your family values. Use gold dust to imprint the family symbol on the red folded envelopes. Your children will have fun telling your visitors about how unique your red packet envelopes are.

6. Learn the art of Chinese paper cutting

Traditionally, Chinese New Year decorations were all handmade. So, instead of buying ready-made decorative items, try the art of paper cutting with your kids. This activity is more suitable for older kids, but with close supervision, you can guide your little ones to work on simpler patterns.

7. Make your own lanterns

A hands-on craft activity that always appeals to children, making Chinese paper lanterns is easy and fun.

First, learn the basics and then put your own creative touch to your finished Chinese lanterns. String them all up to decorate the walkway, or put tea-light candles in them and let them illuminate the balcony.

8. Hire your child as the photographer or videographer

Like the years before, you can expect the Chinese New Year this year to be a bustling family affair. Why not hire your child to be the photographer or videographer this season?

Have her capture all the special family moments and edit them too. Share the video with the entire family on the 15th day of the celebration while eating tang yuan. What a great way to start the Chinese New Year together!

Parents, do you have other ideas on how to bond with your kids this Chinese New Year? Share with us by leaving a comment below.

Written by

Leong Sou Cheng

Chinese New YearFamily bonding