Mid-Autumn Festival Moon Craft DIY

Mid-Autumn Festival (中秋节, Zhōngqiū jié) is tomorrow--Monday, Sept. 8th!  

We like to celebrate this Chinese holiday by reading stories about Chang E and Hou Yi (The kids like the version in Moonbeams, Dumplings, & Dragon Boats best=), nibbling on mooncakes or mooncake cookies, and staying up a little later than usual to gaze at the moon.
This year, I shared about the holiday with Monkey #1's 4th grade class. They listened to a story, nibbled on moon cakes, and learned how to write the character for "moon" (月，yuè).

Click here to download this printable. 
Before sharing with her class, I scoured Pinterest and Google, looking for creative ways for the kids to practice writing this character. 
The criteria were: 

• must be simple (5 or fewer steps; 5 or fewer minutes to complete)
• must use few materials and not be messy 
• and most important of all--must be interesting enough to a 4th grader that it will help them remember how to write the character and what it means. 

And...with 60 minutes left on the clock...this is what I came up with:

Materials:  tracing paper bright card stock or construction paper magic tape big sharpie scissors star stickers (optional) Step 1:   Cut a piece of tracing paper in half or quarters (depending on how large you would like your "window"). My tracing paper was 8X11 so I cut it in quarters to get the most "bang for my buck."
Step 2:  With a thick sharpie, write the Chinese character for moon on it (see above printable for instructions). It can be as large or small as you want.

Step 3: Cut a brightly-colored piece of construction paper or card stock to the same size as your tracing paper. 
Step 4:  Tape the tracing paper to the top of the card stock, using a piece of magic tape.
Step 5: Noting the location of the character, draw a moon with a sharpie on the colored card stock. Your moon can appear behind the entire character (like the one below, left), or just appear in the top half of the character, as if seen through a window (below, right).  And done!

Simple?  Yes! Easy to remember?  Yes! Fun for a 4th grader? Let's just say, the neon paper helped=)

Wishing you a very Happy Mid-Autumn Festival! 中秋节快乐！

Cinnamon Mooncake Cookies

Days before Mid-Autumn festival, the Chinese markets in our community are stocked with colorful tins of mooncakes--tan and golden cakes the size of hockey pucks, imprinted with the Chinese characters for "wealth" and "happiness." They are beautiful! 

The trouble is...my kids have never gotten accustomed to their flavor (slightly sweet or salty due to their lotus bean paste, red bean paste, or egg yolk filling) or texture (dense and a bit chewy like cold cookie dough).

Then, I discovered Spoon and Chair's Cinnamon Buddha Cookie recipe. We used this recipe with the mooncake molds my husband brought back from China--which look to be deeper than Mooncake cookie molds. We ended up with buttery shortbread-type cookies that wowed with cinnamon taste and kept the beautiful shape of the mooncake mold. 

Some tips if using this recipe in your mooncake mold

• Reduce chill time so your dough is pliable enough to work it into the mold with your fingers.

• Use a butter knife to remove the extra dough from the mold. This will make a flat bottom for the cookie...and make it prettier!

• Give the molds a good "ka-whack" to pop the cookies out of the mold. They can get really stuck. Flouring the before adding new dough each time can help with this also. 

• Remove from oven when cookies start turning golden brown. Ours got a little toasty at the end of the recommended 20 minutes.

• For goodness sakes, make 2 batches! With our molds, the recipe yielded only 11 cookies...which means they disappeared in a matter of hours. They are that good.

What treats do you make for Mid-Autumn Festival?