Dairy Godmother: The year of the Dragon!

There has been a lot of celebrating this week here at the Hoffman School for Wayward Boys. Chinese New Year is here and it is the year of the dragon! We made our own Chinese meal on Monday with bean curd, egg drop soup and longevity noodles. The next night we had a great takeout meal from our local Chinese restaurant.
We made our own chinese lanterns to make things more festive. Then our wonderful neighbor stopped by and shared a book with us. Miss Ann brought Lao Lao of Dragon Mountain by Margaret Bateson-Hill. This was a wonderful Chinese folk tale about it a woman that has tremendous skills in making beautiful papercut treasures for all of her fellow villagers. Not only are they beautiful, but they are a great surprise, because it is not until you unfold them that you are able to appreciate what they are. The book is written in English and Chinese. It includes some information on how Chinese writing is different from English writing. It includes some templates and instructions for making your own papercuts. It seems impossible that you will be able to create them, but some are not very hard, like the snowflakes, which we did. The results are wonderful! I highly recommend this book and I am glad that our neighbor was kind enough to share this story.