Wednesday, February 2, 2011

Chinese Jump Rope and the Lunar New Year

Happy Lunar New Year!
Chuc Mung Nam Moi!
Xin Nian Kuai Le!

Across the Pacific, it's already February 3rd, and the Vietnamese and Chinese are busy ushering in the year of the rabbit for the next several days.  So I thought why not celebrate by hopping around a little?  The inspiration to do Chinese jump rope struck me this week as I contemplated what to do with my three energetic kiddos.  We've been snowed in for two days.

Years ago, my best friend and I would play Chinese jump rope together.  In my twenties, I was in China and got to see the real thing.  Now that I have kids, I thought it would be fun to teach them the simple version I learned as a girl.  Here we are, practicing our moves:

In
Out
On!

"Yi, er, san!"
The simple chant of instructions we followed:
One, two, three*,
One, two, three*,
In, out, in, stretch,
In, out, on!


 *We introduced saying the Chinese numbers "yi", "er", "san" instead.
To hear them pronounced, go to the Ting guide.

For rubber band skipping in authentic Asian contexts, take a look at the video slide show and brief YouTube clip below.   Enjoy!






Linking this to WFMW and Show and Tell.

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