New Year Activities for Students: Welcoming the Year with Culture, Goals, and Kindness

Almost all cultures celebrate and welcome the coming of a new year. The start of a new year is a golden opportunity to set the stage for meaningful learning and personal growth in the classroom and serves as the perfect opportunity to reflect on progress. Teaching cultural lessons in the elementary classroom is so important for promoting inclusiveness, understanding, and kindness. Here’s a collection of activities to celebrate the New Year with students, incorporating cultural awareness, goal setting, and community building, suitable for various age groups.

Celebrating Cultural New Year Traditions

The Chinese New Year is celebrated by over 2 billion people around the world, and students love learning about it! In China, and around the world, Cantonese speakers wish each other a new year of happiness by saying, “Gung hay fat choy!” Introduce students to different cultural celebrations of the new year by creating a mini-unit exploring New Year’s traditions around the world and have students research how various countries celebrate and present their findings to the class. This activity includes creating art projects, writing reports, or cooking traditional New Year’s foods and is a fantastic way to broaden their cultural understanding and appreciation.

Delving into Chinese New Year

Chinese New Year began as a holiday that honored ancestors and deities. Traditionally this special time is focused on families coming together to celebrate, feast, and end the old year while ringing in the new year with good luck. There are many colorful, loud, and interesting traditions that go along with this 15-day celebration.

Chinese New Year Activities

Here are some ideas for Chinese New Year activities to use in the classroom:

Chinese New Year Lanterns (and Riddles): Chinese New Year activity and craft includes a teaching about the Chinese New Year, and a paper lantern printable. Dive into the traditions that make up this unique Chinese New Year celebration! After learning about Chinese New Year Lanterns, students can add riddles to their own Chinese New Year paper lantern. This Chinese New Year craft is best on bright red, yellow, gold, or green paper as those are all symbolic Chinese New Year colors. Red represents happiness, success, and good luck. Yellow and gold represent royalty and power, and green represents wealth and money.
Red Envelopes for Chinese New Year: Red envelopes containing money are often exchanged during the Chinese New Year as gifts and symbolize good luck. The classroom activity for Chinese New Year is called, “Wishes for Chinese New Year.” Students write their wishes, hopes, and dreams for our class, our classmates, our school or community, or our world on the papers and fold it into an envelope.
Read Alouds - Chinese New Year Picture Books: Chinese New Year picture books are a great way to introduce the concepts and traditions of the Chinese New Year to students. Vibrant characters and fun storylines bring the celebration to life. Students can see the festival from other perspectives, Chinese New Year for kids from another kid’s viewpoint.
Chinese New Year Writing Activity: Have students watch a dragon dance video, then write a response to a prompt. Students can use the guiding questions to help brainstorm ideas. Dragon dance, for example, is similar to what you might see being used to celebrate the Chinese New Year.

Facts Students Love

The lunar calendar that the Chinese New Year celebration follows is based on the 12 Chinese zodiac animals. Zodiacs are an important part of Chinese culture. Every family has their own favorite meals but some common meals for Chinese New Year food are rice dumplings, long noodles, sweet rice cakes, yusheng and fish. The New Year’s Eve dinner is called ‘reunion dinner’, and is believed to be the most important meal of the year.

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Dancing is an important part of the Chinese New Year and takes place in many shapes and forms. In the Chinese culture, dragons are believed to bring good luck and scare away evil spirits, this is why they are a featured creature in special traditional dances. Chinese New Year parades often showcase a dragon dance and a Chinese New Year lion dance.

In addition to their traditional colors, some other common Chinese New Year symbols are; fish, tangerines and oranges, firecrackers, lanterns, even numbers, and zodiac animals. Furthermore, almost all of the Chinese New Year traditions and symbols are based on bringing good luck, fortune, and health in the new year. The Chinese New Year celebrations come to a close with the lantern festival.

Setting Goals and Intentions for the Year

The new year is a natural time to help students set goals and reflect on the possibilities ahead. Start the new year by encouraging students to set personal and academic goals. Setting goals with students teaches students that they can pave their own path to success! Goal-setting also highlights critical skills such as responsibility, planning, time management, and making good choices.

Goal Setting Activities

"New Year Resolutions" One-Pager: A “New Year Resolutions” one-pager is an easy and unique way for students to set those goals and resolutions. Provide a template with sections for goals, such as academic, social, and personal growth. Students can decorate their posters with drawings and motivational quotes.
One Word Focus: Instead of New Year’s resolutions this year, try choosing one word to focus on for the New Year. Together with your students, brainstorm positive words that they would like to focus on for the year, such as “success,” “organized,” or “kind.” Have students write and display their “word” on a poster and hang it up in the classroom.
SMART Goals: First, it’s important to teach students how to set SMART goals. Rather than wishes or hopes, these goals should be specific with actionable activities students can use to make progress.
Letter to Future Selves: Use the new year as an opportunity to get kids thinking about their future selves. Have learners write a letter to their future selves. You can opt to have them write it to their future self for the end of the school year, or even themselves when they graduate school! Both examples help students to think about goals and aspirations.

Cultivating a Growth Mindset

It’s no secret that a growth mindset can completely transform the way your students approach learning and life. The new year is a natural time to help students set goals and reflect on the possibilities ahead. But instead of typical resolutions, why not frame their goals around developing a growth mindset? Start by introducing the idea of growth mindset with your class.

Growth Mindset Activities

Growth Mindset Personality Quiz: Personality quizzes are a fantastic way to spark curiosity. With this quiz, students will discover their growth mindset star status.
LearnStorm Growth Mindset Video: One great option is the LearnStorm Growth Mindset video called “The Truth About Your Brain.” This short, engaging video explains how the brain is like a muscle, growing and getting stronger with effort.
Growth Mindset Prompts with Music Mingle Activity: This activity gets them thinking critically while building collaboration and communication skills.
New Year One-Pager Activity: This makes perfect New Year activities for students because it combines creative expression with self-reflection while showcasing their unique personalities and goals.

Building Classroom Community

The beginning of a new year serves as the perfect opportunity to reflect on progress. As the new year approaches, it’s the perfect time to rebuild classroom community, review expectations, and ease back into learning.

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Community Building Activities

New Year’s Around the World Escape Room and a New Year’s Scavenger Hunt: These activities can be used just for this purpose.
New Year’s Time Capsule: A New Year’s Time Capsule is a fun way for students to see how much they grow and change over a year. Create a one-page time capsule or use a One-Pager template. Have them include their friends, hobbies, favorite songs, movies, games, etc. Brainstorm about other things they could add, such as resolutions, dreams for their future, etc.
New Year Celebration: With so many students celebrating different holidays over Winter Break, why not have a party to celebrate the New Year instead? On the day before winter break, schedule a “party” with New Year crafts and a countdown to noon (or any time that works for you).
Collaborative Coloring Poster: Collaborative coloring is a great way to build community in your classroom, and the New Year is the perfect time to come together! To do this, create a large “Happy New Year” poster and split it so that each student can get one portion to color. When students finish coloring their pieces, assemble and glue the poster together. Post it on a bulletin board, and have students write a resolution on a fun shape, such as a star, a New Year’s hat, or a heart. Staple their resolutions around the poster.
Kindness Activities: Any time of year is the right time to teach about kindness. The beginning of the year can serve as a great reminder to show kindness, use our manners, help others, and be a friend to those in need.

Gratitude and Positive Mindset

Gratitude Lists: Research has shown that practicing gratitude on a regular basis invites calm, builds meaningful relationships, and strengthens community. To practice gratitude in the new year, encourage students to share some different things they are grateful for (in school and beyond). From art supplies to learning facts about the solar system, there is a lot to be grateful for. Students can create their own gratitude lists and store them in a gratitude journal or binder.
New Year Chain: A New Year chain is a craft that you can keep around the room throughout the remainder of the year. To get started, cut pieces of paper into 4 smaller pieces. On each slip, have students write one wish or hope they have for the new year. This can be anything, such as individual goals and aspirations or hopes the world as a whole.
Positive Self-Talk: A new year means the chance for a new positive mindset. Help learners build their encouraging inner voice with positive self-talk. To start, read and discuss several positive affirmations focused on starting a new year.
Wish Wall: Make a wish for the New Year! A wish wall is a space where everyone can add their big and small wishes for the world around us.

Incorporating Social-Emotional Learning

Use a new year countdown to touch upon 5 important social-emotional topics for success. Use the 5-4-3-2-1 New Year Countdown Activity Book to create a lasting memory of this new year’s activity. Another activity for focusing on positive choices in the new year is choosing your one word. This word should symbolize your way of being in the new year. Remind students that they can help take charge of their success through healthy habits. No matter the age, we all need reminders from time to time about healthy habits like organizing materials, doing responsibilities right away, and practicing calming strategies to manage stress.

Returning to Routine

On the first day back from Winter Break, celebrate the New Year with students with some easy and no prep Classroom New Year’s Activities! It gives students a chance to get back into routines plus set goals for the new year! Start the new year by encouraging students to set personal and academic goals.

Activities for the First Week Back

Morning Message: Have a morning message pulled up on a Smart Board when students arrive in the morning! Students can read the message and see their morning work for the day!
Review Activities: For Morning Work, use a simple review page or coloring page! This allows students to work independently and gives time to get organized for the day!
Read Aloud: Read the book Squirrel’s New Year’s Resolution! It is perfect for explaining to students what a resolution is and why we make them!
Phonics Game: Students play the Time to Celebrate Magic E game with a partner. They then complete the CVC and CVCe phonics sort!
Mindful Mornings: Have a built-in time called “Mindful Mornings” where kids can talk, read, or work on some activities for the first 15 minutes.
Review Classroom Rules: During Morning Meeting, go over the schedule for the day and review classroom rules.
Community Service: In honor of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, perform community service.

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