A visit from the Lion Dancers

We were very excited to have Chinese Lion Dancers visit our school on Friday!!!  The children have been talking about it and it finally happened! (Now they believe me that it wouldn't be a real lion coming to our school!).

We prepared by making our own Lion Dancing masks, inspired by photos of real lion dancers:

Then we used our masks and our play silks to make a Lion Dance parade! 

Since real Lion Dancers have more than one person in each costume, we tried to do the same! The children did great in this activity. I was surprised--but not.  These children can execute group activities in a harmonious manner like no other group I've seen before. 

We prepared some thank you notes and put them in red envelopes so that we could feed them to the Lion! 

And the big moment! The real Lion Dancing!!! 

They were amazing! They played music and did some very acrobatic moves. They explained traditional elements of the Lion and the performance in the context of Chinese New Year.  The whole event exceeded our wildest imagination!

We were so grateful to have this beautiful performance at our school!  

*Stephanie*