Lantern Riddles Activity Sheet

新年快樂 san1 nin4 faai3 lok6! I hope everyone is having a wonderful New Years. After our exhausting drive last week, we had an amazing reunion dinner (my baby and my partner’s first one). It was so good to see my family and well worth the trip. We’re now looking forward to the Lantern Festival next week!

AJ couldn’t believe his eyes when we arrived at the restaurant on New Years Day. He loved all the lanterns and kept babbling about them!

Lantern Riddles

Lantern riddles are as old as the Song Dynasty (960 to 1279 CE). People would hang lanterns and attach to them riddles written on paper. If a passerby knew the answer to the riddle, they would tear off the paper riddle and take it to the lantern owner. They may even have earned themselves a small prize for their intellect.

Traditionally, there are three features of a lantern riddle that differentiates them from riddles in English:

Three-part format – Lantern riddles are composed of the riddle, the suggest, and the answer.
Relying on homonyms – Whilst some English puzzles make use of double-meanings of words, there are way more homonyms in Chinese. Lantern riddles require you to know multiple meanings of Chinese characters to unlock the solution.
No repeats – The answer should not repeat any character from the riddle.

Lantern Riddles Activity Sheet

My free download includes both a coloured and a black and white version of the activity sheet depending on whether your children would like to do some colouring.

So your little ones can partake in this long-standing tradition, Ive created an activity sheet. The challenge is to connect the lanterns to the tassel that contains the corresponding solution. You can connect the parts simply by drawing lines between them or you could cut out the lanterns and connect the parts with thread.

Because of the complex nature of Chinese lantern riddles, I’ve used English riddles on my activity sheets to make it more suitable for non-fluent families. The answers to the riddles are in Cantonese so I’m sneaking in a little bit of exposure in there.

Grab the Activity Sheet

I hope you enjoyed my printables. Please send me photos of your little ones’ creations to mamabearcantonese@gmail.com as I would love to see their work. 恭喜發財 gung1 hei2 faat3 coi4!

P.S. You can support Mama Bear Cantonese on Patreon. From £1 a month, you can access editable versions of all my resources as well as bonus content. Your generosity will help cover this site’s running costs. 多謝 do1 ze6!