As a way to help my girls experience the culture and tradition of Chinese New Year and the year of the horse, we attended the Lunar New Year Family Festival at Museum of Chinese in America (MOCA). I’ve recently found this museum and just love the family events. My girls find them interesting and and they really enjoy the activities.
I recruited my brother to come with me to the family festival. He is always overwhelmed with all of the chaos at children events but really gets into participating with them.
One of the drop-in-art-and-craft was silk screening with Tomie Arai, the artist behind the exhibit, Portraits of New York Chinatown. I’d never seen silk screening so this was such a treat. I give Tomie Arai a lot of credit for creating this children’s activities. We were all fascinated. The whole process is actually very simple. First, paint is brushed over the horse stencil.
Second, remove the paper with the stenciled horse. Then you just let the paint dry for 5 minutes.
Even my Baby had a turn to make one.
We let our screen printed horses dry next to all of the other crafts we had made that day.
Once the paint dried, the girls made cards for the year of the horse.
One activity we did at the last event, Mid-Autumn Moon Festival, was chinese calligraphy. For younger children, they put the horse character underneath the paper to trace. Older children copy the character by site. My Princess really enjoys the activity.
The Lunar New Year Family Festival was more crowded then the Mid-Autumn Moon Festival and by the time we got there, the lion dance performance and workshop, the main event, was full. The girls really enjoy the crafts and these were still open so we were still good to go. Next year, we will definitely get there early to have our choice of all activities.
The Dumpling Mama xo