By Peter Young, CHCP Director

Cherrywood Elementary School in the Berryessa District of San Jose held a free Lunar New Year Family Night Celebration Friday, February 7th in their Multi-Purpose Room. The celebration focused on keeping the Lunar New Year traditions alive and to showcase the talents of the school’s Mandarin Immersion students who hosted 15 cultural booths on Chinese culture and the Lunar New Year. The talents of the students were very much evident as one could see from the booths that evening. Most popular booth was the Candy Paint booth where students were able to create their own candy in a Chinese character. Most creative booth was the Finger Knit Snakes booth where the students knitted a snake on their fingers. Honorable Mention went to the Face Painting booth where students had their face and arms painted with Chinese characters. All of the booths showed creativity and planning. I was very much impressed.

Many of the 560 students attended the event along with their parents. Everyone was treated to samplings of Chinese dumpling, vegetarian dumpling, sticky rice, fried rice, and chow mein. The Fei Teng Lion Dance Group treated everyone to a dazzling lion dance performance and martial arts display. Cherrywood Elementary School Principal Tina Choy was the emcee and Emily Ho of the Cherrywood Home and School Association was instrumental in the planning and organization of the fun event. Cherrywood Elementary’s Home and School Association was a recipient of a CHCP HELP Grant to help cover costs for the event.