The Mid-Autumn Festival is a wonderful opportunity for children to discover Chinese language and traditional culture.

This year, teachers at both YouGuang Chinese School’s Richmond Hill Main Campus and Oakville Campus brought together Chinese character learning, traditional culture, observation, and creative hands-on activities to create an engaging Mid-Autumn Festival classroom experience.

Rather than simply telling children about the festival, we wanted them to see it, touch it, create something themselves, and experience it.

Students first learned Chinese characters and vocabulary related to the Mid-Autumn Festival.

To help children understand the connection between the festival and the full moon, teachers used light and shadow to demonstrate the changing phases of the Moon on the classroom wall.

As different shapes of the Moon appeared before them, an abstract concept became visual, engaging, and much easier for young children to understand.

The children could even reach out to “touch the Moon” and look for the little white rabbit from traditional Chinese stories.

In that moment, observation, traditional culture, storytelling, and a child's imagination came together naturally.

Then came one of the children's favourite activities: making their own rabbit lanterns.

With guidance from their teachers, each child created a lantern of their own. And when the lanterns lit up, there was a special surprise:

the light projected the Chinese characters “花好月圆” onto the floor.

The children loved carrying their handmade lanterns and watching the glowing Chinese characters appear beneath them.

For young learners, cultural education should be about more than memorizing a few words such as “Mid-Autumn Festival,” “moon,” or “mooncake.”

We want children to see Chinese culture, interact with it, participate in it, and enjoy it.

This reflects an important part of YouGuang's approach to Chinese education:

Children should not only learn Chinese—they should enjoy learning it. They should not only know about Chinese culture—they should experience it.

From recognizing Chinese characters to observing the phases of the Moon, from hearing stories about the Moon and the Jade Rabbit to creating a lantern that projects “花好月圆,” these small classroom experiences can gradually become warm and meaningful memories of both the Chinese language and Chinese culture.

Learn Chinese with joy. Experience Chinese culture through discovery.

The same Mid-Autumn Festival learning experience took place at both our Richmond Hill Main Campus and Oakville Campus, reflecting the consistent teaching approach and classroom experience we strive to provide across YouGuang Chinese School.