Need advice please for Chinese New Year!

[needtosleepmore]

DDs nursery have just said this morning they are doing a Chinese New Year theme, and have asked if I can come in next week to do a session with the kids to do an activity to share our culture so to speak.
Eeek! I am now panicking as to what I can do! I don't know of any stories etc to tell and to be honest we never actually celebrated it that much because it was never a big thing in our family growing up here! I am a BBC btw.
Please does anyone have any suggestions for something I could do which would interest a group of 3 - 5 year olds? I am having kittens over this - it's worse than a job interview!

I tend to take in some fruit to share with chiildren - lychees, pomelo, chinese pears, etc.
You could also put some raisins in lucky money envelope for the children and explain significance?

I'm BBC too, but don;t read Chinese so can't go in and read a story.

Oh, and if you know what you're doing, you could also go in and make spring rolls with children.

I work in a pre-school but am Caucasian.

ideas - game with chopsticks - try to pick up peas?

make a simple chinese dish - obv ask about allergies first - we served prawn crackers for snack

we also did dragon dancing - one of the staff members made a dragon several years ago and it gets brought out every year - do you have any music the children could listen to and move to?

we've also made lanterns and paper dragons and money purses - any good?

I'm assuming firecrackers are out....

Lanterns, paper-cuts, making red envelopes, showing the children how to write some Chinese characters (if you can write them), maybe telling them a Chinese folk story or telling them about the 12 animals of the zodiac?

The chopstick game sounds fun too, and anything involving food tends to go down well, though you would have to check with the school first.

Thank You people, what would I do without Mumsnet .
Loads of ideas here, I like the idea of making money purses etc, letter writing (limited but I can do some) and bringing in some food. Excellent!

Wear red - it's a lucky colour.

Another suggestion - DD came back from school today with a dancing dragon they'd made as part of their Chinese new year day: two sticks (disposable chopsticks would do) joined with a strip of paper folded concertina-style, and a dragon's face stuck to one stick, and some strips of paper for a streamer-style tail on the other stick. I think the dragon faces were printed out from somewhere for the children to colour in.

It looked a bit like this lion and they all seemed to have had fun making them, and then getting them to dance.