In China, we celebrate Dragon Boat Festival to memorize the great man, Qu Yuan. It is also called Duanwu Festival, as it falls on the 5^th May on Lunar Calendar. According to the ancient record, May is the start of summer when it is a high time for people to feel the fresh air; and the 5^th day of May is a great day to refresh oneself, so it is called “Duanwu”.

To celebrate Dragon Boat Festival and teach children the history and tradition about this day, JDM Shunyi Campus organized several activities for children and teachers: making five colors ropes, dragon boat drawing, making plasticene rice-pudding, and making real rice-pudding…,bringing more happiness to this special day.

In Chinese traditional culture, the five basic colors: green, red, white, black, and yellow are regarded as symbol of “Five Elements and Five Orientations” and as luck. On Dragon Boat Festival, children usually wear the five colors ropes for blessings and luck.

With the help and instruction of teachers, children made their own five colors ropes, and their energetic efforts transformed plain strings into beautiful artworks.

To get children to know better about the dragon boating tradition, we also taught them how to draw dragon boat and encouraged the best drawers with awards.

To make a paper dragon boat, children need to color the heads and tails of their dragons; then to connect the head and tail with crape paper as the body; lastly to add two straws to it as handles.

As for the plasticene rice-pudding project, Teacher Daisy guided children to make plastincene into cute, mini rice-pudding with green “leaves” covering white “rice” like a real rice-pudding

After this, teachers showed children how to make rice-puddings in real life, then instructed them to make one themselves. Everyone had great time.

--- “teacher, the folded leaves looks like an ice cream!”

--- “exactly, let’s put yummy rice and sweet dates into the ice cream!”

The kids covered the rice with leaves and bond them with a string like a skilled cook.

Holding their products, kids were smiling happily! They put their rice-puddings into lunch boxes and wanted to share them with their family.

Children spent a lovely and productive day at JDM. It not only trained and developed children’s dexterity, but also got them a better understanding of the traditions and culture about Dragon Boat Festival.