Chinese Lunar New Year Dramatic Play – Spring Festival Feast!
This Spring Festival themed dramatic play area is a fun way to celebrate Chinese New Year. Introduce your Preschool, Pre-K, or Kindergarten students to Lunar New Year traditions with pretend play! Immersing children in a Spring Festival celebration using these dramatic play printables, helps spark curiosity and cultural awareness. Below, you’ll find simple tips for setting up a festive, meaningful play area. In addition, we’ll explore some background on the holiday and share tried-and-true teaching suggestions.
What Is Lunar New Year?
The Lunar New Year, often called Chinese New Year, marks the beginning of a new year based on the lunar calendar. During this special time, families honor ancestors, share abundant meals, and exchange red envelopes filled with lucky money. This is done to usher in good fortune. Notably, 2025 will be the Year of the Snake, one of the 12 Chinese zodiac animals. By including lunar new year activities in your classroom, you help students appreciate diverse customs. Moreover, they learn how people around the world unite to celebrate new beginnings.
Benefits of Dramatic Play for Spring Festival?
Dramatic play is a powerful way to inspire young learners. Through pretend play, children expand their language skills, practice turn-taking, and ignite their imaginations. Therefore, creating a Lunar New Year dramatic play center provides many benefits:
- Develop Cultural Awareness
By seeing decorations such as lanterns and learning about special foods, children begin to value the beauty of Chinese New Year traditions. - Build Social-Emotional Skills
Role-playing chefs, hosts and guests encourages empathy, cooperation, and clear communication. - Foster Language & Literacy
Using labels, signs, and short phrases (in English or Mandarin) offers purposeful reading and writing experiences.
<<Find these Lunar New Year dramatic play printables here.>>
Simple Steps to Set Up a Spring Festival Dramatic Play Area
1. Transform the Space
Begin by hanging bright red and gold decorations to reflect the festive spirit of Chinese New Year. I found the gold curtain in the party section of Spotlight (Australia), and a number of traditional decorations from a local discount store. I’ve included many printable decorations too such as lanterns, red envelopes and a printable dragon head, which I used to make a paper cup dragon (shown below).
<<Get these Chinese New Year dramatic play printables here.>>
2. Hands-on Lunar New Year Activities for Kids
I’ve included lots of dramatic play printables that include culturally relevant signs, labels, and pretend money envelopes. This approach supports vocabulary development and guides children as they engage in pretend play. One of my favorite areas is where the children can write a wish to hang on the cherry blossom tree or fill a red envelope (hóngbāo) with play money. I made a cherry blossom tree out of cardboard, pink crepe paper and tape. Then I got some clothes pins, to help children develop their fine motor skills, while hanging their wish on the tree. I found this a bit more practical than tying the wishes to the tree with string. My kids loved clipping their wishes to the tree!
<<Grab these Lunar New Year activities here.>>
3. Invite Role-Play
Encourage children to act out a family preparing for Chinese New Year. Kids can cook in a play kitchen or be guests. Make noodles from thick white yarn or serve printable food. For a crafty touch, create dumplings and spring rolls from brown felt. YouTube has tutorials for felt play food. In classrooms, durable, commercially made play food is ideal. Always supervise dramatic play areas, especially when using pretend food or tools like chopsticks!
<<Get these Lunar New Year pretend play printables here.>>
4. Explore Chinese Zodiac Animals
Introduce the twelve Chinese zodiac animals by telling the story of “The Great Race”. Then the children can act out the story with the printable animal puppets. I made these by attaching the pictures to some popsicle sticks with tape. I’ve added ordinal numbers to the puppets, so the kids can put them in order from 1st to 12th too.
<<Find these Chinese Zodiac animal puppets here.>>
Extra Teaching Tips
- Use Real Artifacts
Whenever possible, bring authentic decorations or cooking utensils to deepen the sensory experience. - Incorporate Music
Play traditional Chinese music during center time. This creates an authentic atmosphere and energizes the classroom. - Encourage Family Involvement
Invite parents to share cultural stories, photos, or artifacts. As a result, your classroom community grows stronger while children learn from real-life examples.
<<Find these Lunar New Year dramatic play printables here.>>
Celebrate the Year of the Snake 2025 with Confidence
By creating a Lunar New Year dramatic play environment, you offer students a fun way to explore the Spring Festival. They will enjoy discovering Chinese New Year traditions, and with just a few dramatic play printables and thoughtful planning, you can bring this cultural celebration to life in your classroom! You can get these fun pretend play printables from my TPT store below.
Lunar New Year Crafts for Kids
If you’re looking for crafts such as lanterns, dragon masks, fans and Chinese zodiac animal crafts, then be sure to check out the following Chinese New Year activities too.
1. Lunar New Year Crafts
The following crafts are low prep and include lantern crafts, windsocks, dragon masks, and more! Learn more here.
2. Chinese Zodiac Animals Wheel and Crafts
I love the following set of activities, because in addition to the Chinese zodiac wheel craft there are activities for every Chinese zodiac animal. The crafts will be useful for years to come as you celebrate the Year of the Snake 2025, Year of the Horse 2026, Year of the Goat 2027, Year of the Monkey 2028, Year of the Rooster 2029 and so on. You can learn more about these crafts here.