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Slide THE ACTIVITY Dragon Boat Festival: Celebrating Culture! Introducing kids to many cultures and celebrations gives them a wider view of the world and its many different people. This picture shows a specific cultural celebration: The Dragon Boat Festival, which is a Chinese holiday.

Children may understand one of your family’s celebrations or traditions; exposing them to another culture’s ways of celebrating can expand their worldview and help them learn about others.
Slide LESSON Dragon Boat Festival: Celebrating Culture! There are many types of holidays and celebrations in every culture. Even if we observe different holidays or celebrate the same holiday in different ways, the fact that we celebrate is something that makes us all similar. Slide TIP Dragon Boat Festival: Celebrating Culture! Lean into your child’s natural curiosity, and encourage them to ask questions in a respectful way about something that is new to them. If there is someone who is celebrating and seems interested in sharing, encourage your child to ask if they can explain their tradition: “I’ve never seen this type of celebration. What are you celebrating?” Also consider finding books, TV shows, and digital games that model and expose children to different celebrations. Slide TO BEGIN Dragon Boat Festival: Celebrating Culture! Look at the picture with your child, and ask what they notice.
• What do you think is happening in this picture?
• What are these people celebrating?
Is there anything here that you’ve never seen or done before?
• Is there anything that you see that looks familiar to you or that you’ve seen or done before?
• Would you like to try doing what the people are doing in the illustration?
Slide EXPLAIN THE PHOTO Dragon Boat Festival: Celebrating Culture! Give your child some context to help them understand what is happening in the photo.
• This is a picture of people celebrating The Dragon Boat Festival. On this yearly holiday, many Chinese people celebrate and think about people in Chinese history.
• Racing on boats is a tradition of the Dragon Boat Festival! The racers paddle to the beat of a drum.
• It is believed that members of the winning team will have good luck for the next year.
Slide Include Your Child Dragon Boat Festival: Celebrating Culture! Help your child think about how the Dragon Boat Festival reminds him/her of familiar celebrations and activities. Ask:
• Is there someone in the picture you’d like to play with? Why?
• What foods would you want to eat?
• What are some ways we celebrate our holidays?
• Does this celebration remind you of any of our family’s celebrations or holidays?
Slide Your Special Holidays and Traditions Dragon Boat Festival: Celebrating Culture! Ask questions to help your child think about family traditions and how they are similar and different from what’s shown in the illustration:
• What holidays do we celebrate?
• What do we eat, wear, and do during our favorite holidays? Who do we celebrate with?
• What is similar and different about the Dragon Boat Festival from holidays we celebrate?
Slide Your Dragon Boat Festival Dragon Boat Festival: Celebrating Culture! If you do celebrate the Dragon Boat Festival, ask questions to understand your child’s experience compared to this illustration.
• How is this similar to or different from our experience celebrating the Dragon Boat Festival?
• What do we eat, wear, and do when we celebrate the Dragon Boat Festival? With whom do we celebrate?
Slide Create a Story Dragon Boat Festival: Celebrating Culture! Pick people in the image and create stories about them. Here are some ideas to get you started:
• One day, a boy and his grandmother came to the park to celebrate the Dragon Boat Festival…
• The children climbed into the dragon boat. One learned to paddle; one learned how to drum…
• One child was eating a zong/zongzi (a type of Chinese food) during the festival. A friend was eating a hot dog. They decided to share!