Conversation cubes

Children love the story cubes and I was inspired by it so I invented these conversation cubes.
Great games for the classroom circle time!!

幸運餅乾 xingyun bingan (fortune cookies)

To celebrate the end of Chinese new year.
Children were given a fortune cookie.
One asked: where was fortune cookies came from?
I said: from Lidl!!
Then asked: why it's called fortune cookie?

Out of blue, I must admit I haven't a clue but I said: Chinese people like to go to the fortune teller to seek references for their futures. And I guess that's why fortunes cookies was invented.

Now that I looked up the wonderful Google.

I am so wrong! 

If you remember the character Mandarin in Iron Man 3, he said: true story about fortune cookies. They look Chinese, they sound Chinese, but they are actually an American invention. Which is why they are hollow, full of lies and leave bad taste in the mouth. 

He also said: fortune cookies aren't even Chinese, they are made by American, based on a Japanese recipe.

Here's the piece about fortune cookie. :-)

元宵節 yuán xiāo jié （Lantern Festival)

Yap, Chinese New Year celebration last for 16 days from New Year's eve till Lantern festival althought people would have gone back to work yesterday (Lunar 5th Jan).
If you are interested in the story, please look up the post from 2013.


I love recycling and I always keep boxes, cardboards, toilet paper rolls etc for the arts workshop.  This week, we have a tiny paper cutting work for kids made from the recycled spring couplets (春聯 chūn lián）. Younger childre did the simple lantern and older children made these!

造句 zao4 ju4 make sentence

Learning through games and competitions are our ethos as its great fun for children.
We use word cards with no picture so they have to read both character and pinyin to make out what the words are.
I told them they're allow to look at books and copy the sentences but they were surprisingly creative!!