The Great Race Activity

Tell the story about The Great Race to kids with a fun play activity.

The Great Race is a story about how the 12 animals in the Chinese zodiac originated and is one of the famous stories being told during Chinese New Year.

For this activity, I made the boys watch a short film about The Great Race on YouTube and we identified the names of each animals.

How to create The Great Race activity:

Materials needed:

Recycled cardboard
Colored papers
Colored popsicle sticks
Red design paper
Black marker
Scissors
Glue gun and stick
Small round label sticker
Pencil

Instructions:

Sketch and cut the different parts of the animals from the colored papers.
Glue the pieces together.
Attach each animal to the popsicle sticks.
Write the numbers 1 to 12 on the label sticker and stick them under each animal. This is based on the order of The Great Race’s winners.
Cut out two rectangles from the cardboard and attach around 2 inches of red pattern paper to the bottom.
Divide each red paper into six section.
Place the names of each animals into each section and write the numbers 1 to 12 on the top part of the cardboards.
Sketch some wave shapes and cut them from a blue colored paper for the river.

How we played:

While watching the The Great Race film, we played with our popsicle animals and followed the order of the animals that joined the race. We also identified the animal names in English, Dutch and Tagalog.