'Celebrating Mid-Autumn Festival' Mini Unit Day 1

Author Eugenia Chu is at it again and this time she's teamed up with Y.Y. Chan and illustrator Eliza Hsu Chen to bring us an amazing reference book for the Mid-Autumn Festival. Just like "Celebrating Chinese New Year," this is an all-inclusive guide to the holiday including information about its history, legends, traditions, as well as instructions on how to make your own mooncakes and decorations. 

For our first day of learning, we read pages 1-7 of "Celebrating Mid-Autumn Festival": "What is the Mid-Autumn Festival" and "History and Folklore." We discovered that Mid-Autumn Festival is a bit similar to American Thanksgiving - it began as a celebration of the harvest moon (and the autumn harvest!) and has now become a time for families to gather together (and eat!). Because the date of the festival changes every year (it falls on the 15th day of the 8th month of the Chinese lunisolar calendar), in China it's usually connected to the weekend so everyone gets a 3-day weekend. In 2023, Mid-Autumn Festival falls on Friday, September 29th.

Next we learned about the legends of Houyi and Chang'e, the Moon Goddess, and the Jade Rabbit. You can find out about Houyi and Chang'e in this video from Netflix After School. The Netflix movie, Over the Moon, is a good one to watch when learning about Mid-Autumn Festival. It follows the story of Fei Fei who travels to the moon to prove the existence of the Moon Goddess. 

We took inspiration from the Jade Rabbit for a craft after our reading. First, we made a few adorable origami rabbits using this tutorial from Art Hub for Kids.

Then, the kids decided they wanted to sew rabbit decorations but we ran out of time. I did, however, manage to make a rabbit and moon template for their sewing project so hopefully they'll be finished by the end of the week! Feel free to download the template to use yourself: Jade Rabbit and Moon Template. A banner using the rabbit and moon shapes would be super cute as well - and you could add one of the phrases listed below!

I'll be back soon with more Mid-Autumn Festival fun!