We are ringing in the Lunar New Year, which began on January 22, with community celebrations at both our Excelsior and Portola centers.

This past week, Friday Family Fun Night welcomed over 60 kids and adults from Excelsior to honor the year of the rabbit (or the year of the cat in Vietnamese culture), and learn about the significance of these annual traditions.

Families enjoyed dumplings and fortune cookies, crafted dragon puppets, and watched lion dance performers. Kids loved watching the lions devour the lettuce and toss it into the crowd. This tradition comes from the similarity in the Chinese/Cantonese words for wealth and leafy greens, so the lion dancers are gifting prosperity to the audience.

In one of our Chinese support groups, participants made their own red envelopes, adorned with a rabbit, and prepared dumplings together. The Excelsior Pre-K class sculpted colorful rabbits out of clay and our Portola Pre-K created rabbit masks.

Our Lunar New Year festivities are not over yet! We will be hosting the Portola Lunar New Year Celebration on Friday, February 3, from 4:30 – 5:30 pm at our Portola center. We will have games, lion dance performers, and arts and crafts projects for kids.

We will have games, lion dance performers, and arts and crafts projects that families can take home. Check out the event page on our program calendar for more details. Honor the rabbit and hop over to it to join us for a wonderful day celebrating with friends, families, and the neighborhood.