Chinese New Year: The 12 Chinese Animal Birth Signs Activity & Culture (Traditional Chinese-Pinyin-English)
Read Learning Unit Description here.
Are you a Monkey? Are you a Chicken/Rooster? Are you a dog? Are you a pig? Chinese children ask their friends these questions for fun. They also use the Animal Birth Signs to figure out how old their friends are. With the arrival of the Year of the Rooster less than 10 days, we are going to take a look at the fun twelve Chinese Animal Birth Signs .
There are twelve animals and it is a 12-year cycle. If a baby boy and a baby girl are born between January 28,2017 and February 15, 2018 they will turn 12 years old when the next Rooster year comes.
Let’s take a look at the 12 Chinese Animal Birth Signs fun sheet and see if you can find the animal signs for each of your family members. This is a printable so you can click on the image above and print it out. You can color it or cut each one out and make them a set to play the Chinese Zodiac matching game.
A big thank you goes to our amazing Chinese artist, Rebecca Yi-Lun Lee for creating these 12 adorable Chinese zodiac animals for Miss Panda. Ms. Lee is also a fantastic Art teacher for children.
Do you know each animal has its own personality and characteristics? It is always a fun game for kids to find out each family member’s animal sign and see if s/he has the similar characteristics. When there is an activity involved the language and culture learning become interactive and engaging. I have The 12 Chinese Animal Signs Activities & Culture Learning Unit to go with this fun theme.
Click on the image above to download the printable.
The order of the animals is as below and it is how you should remember them.
(1) Mouse: shǔ 鼠 as lǎo shǔ 老鼠 (2) Cow: niú 牛
(3) Tiger: hǔ 虎 as lǎohǔ 老虎 (4) Rabbit: tù 兔 as tù zǐ 兔子
(5) Dragon: lóng 龍 (6) Snake: shé 蛇
(7) Horse: mǎ 馬 (8) Sheep: yáng 羊
(9) Monkey: Hóu 猴 as hóu zi 猴子 (10) Chicken: jī 雞
(11) Dog: gǒu 狗 as xiǎo gǒu 小狗 (12) Pig: 豬 zhū
Phrases and sentences to know about the Chinese Animal Birth Signs:
1. 12 Chinese Animal Birth Signs – Shí’ èr shēng xiào 十二生肖。
2. What is your animal birth sign? – Nǐ shǔ shén me? 你屬什麼?
3. Were you born in the year of the horse? – Nǐ shì mǎ nián shēng de ma? 你是馬年生的嗎?
4. I was born in the year of the dragon. – Wǒ shì lóng nián shēng de. 我是龍年生的。
5. I am a dragon. – Wǒ shǔ lóng. 我屬龍。
6. I was born in the year of the horse. – Wǒ shì mǎ nián shēng de. 我是馬年生的。
7. I am a horse. – Wǒ shǔ mǎ. 我屬馬。
Chinese New Year: The 12 Chinese Animal Birth Signs Activity & Culture (Simplified Chinese-Pinyin-English)
Read Learning Unit Description here.
Extended Learning Resources on Chinese Lunar New year:
Let’s take a look at the Myth Behind The Chinese Zodiac in this video by TedEd.
Here is a video with all twelve Chinese Animal Birth signs. Look closely with the transformation of the writing. You can see the animals with their matching Chinese characters in this animation. Dog- gǒu狗 is also known as Quǎn 犬 in classic Chinese and that is what you will see in the video. Enjoy!
All extended learning resources listed above belong to the copyright holders. We appreciate their kindness to share the learning resource with us.
Happy Lunar New Year! Have a happy, healthy, and successful Year of the Rooster!
©2017 Miss Panda Chinese All Rights Reserved.
Thanks to you.. your blog is so inpiring. I am a teacher at elementary school in Indonesia. I like the coloring pages you’ve made, hopefully i can use it in class. 谢谢！ O(∩_∩)O~
I was delighted to know you enjoy the fun sheets. Hope your students have fun with them learning Chinese. Have a fantastic day! ~Miss Panda