Lunar New Year Classroom Activities for Primary

Lunar New Year in the Australian primary classroom

Lunar New Year is one of the most widely celebrated cultural events in Australia, marked by Chinese, Vietnamese, Korean, and many other communities. The date moves each year because it follows the lunar calendar — Lunar New Year 2026 fell on 17 February (the Year of the Horse), and Lunar New Year 2027 falls on 6 February (the Year of the Sheep) — but the classroom value is constant. It is a chance to teach about cultural celebrations, build vocabulary across languages, study the twelve animals of the zodiac, and bring multicultural visibility into a Term 1 unit.

For schools with significant Chinese, Vietnamese, or Korean enrolments, Lunar New Year is also an opportunity to honour the cultural heritage of students and families directly. Many of the strongest classroom plans pair the cultural learning with a student-voice element — children sharing how their family celebrates, contributing language to a class display, or co-leading a song or craft activity. The resources collected here support both that community-led approach and a more general celebration suited to schools without specific community connections.

Picking activities that match your class context

The single biggest planning question is whether you are leading a respectful introduction to a celebration that is not your own, or whether you are building on existing community knowledge in your classroom. Both approaches are valid, but the activities that suit each are different.

For classes without strong community connections, a structured introduction is the right move — read-aloud picture books, a brief overview of the festival's origins, the twelve zodiac animals, the colour and symbol associations (red, gold, lanterns, dragons), and a craft or writing response that asks students to demonstrate what they have learned rather than reproduce stereotypes. The Foundation and Stage 1 picture-book studies in this guide work especially well for that approach, and several use Australian-published texts so the framing is appropriate for an Australian classroom.

For classes with significant heritage representation, the activities can lean into student voice. Family interviews, a class language wall built up over the fortnight, a rotation where heritage students teach their classmates one cultural detail (a song, a craft technique, a food, a greeting), and a celebration day where families are invited in. Several resources below include parent communication templates and a discussion-protocol scaffold so the student-led elements are structured and inclusive.

Activities by year level

For Foundation, Year 1, and Year 2, a picture-book read-aloud paired with a craft response (lantern making, paper-cut zodiac animals, simple greeting cards) fills an English block well. Several picture books in this guide come with a printable response page and discussion sentence-starters.

For Year 3 and Year 4, biographical and informational study works well — short texts about the festival's history and how it is celebrated across different cultures, a comparison task across two or three countries, and an information report writing task. Pair this with the information report writing guide for the writing-craft side.

For Year 5 and Year 6, the substantive units focus on cultural geography, migration history, and the Australian Lunar New Year story — often connected to broader HSIE units on Australian multiculturalism. The HSIE Stage 3 collection includes several units that can be expanded with a Lunar New Year focus, and the Harmony Week activities guide is a useful companion for schools planning a wider multicultural unit across Term 1.

Craft and visual arts that go beyond the cliché

The stronger Lunar New Year craft activities in this guide go beyond the standard red-lantern template. They include paper-cut techniques drawn from authentic art traditions, calligraphy basics with stroke order for simple greeting characters, dragon-puppet making for a stage performance, and a class-display lantern wall students contribute to over the fortnight. For Stage 1 and Stage 2 visual arts outcomes, several units explicitly connect the craft to the relevant content descriptions so the activity counts as substantive arts learning rather than craft-as-decoration.

For seasonal-celebration planning across the school year, this guide pairs naturally with the NAIDOC Week activities guide, the Easter activities guide, and the Christmas activities collection so Term 1 through Term 4 has a consistent multicultural and seasonal frame.