Glen Grove Celebrates Lunar New Year – Year of the Fire Horse

On February 13, 2026, Glen Grove Elementary School celebrated its fourth annual Lunar New Year event, organized by the Glen Grove Community Project (GGCP.) The evening brought families together through performances, food, and interactive activities to welcome the Year of the Fire Horse.

The celebration showcased a variety of Lunar New Year traditions through performances, activities, and food shared by families across the community. Highlights included a Mongolian deel cultural runway with students from Moji Modeling Agency, Vietnamese dance performances, and a high-energy Lion and Dragon Dance by Hoang Phuc Lion Dance. Around the gym, families visited activity tables featuring a Mongolian ger (yurt) craft, Mongolian and Chinese calligraphy, and traditional games such as Korean ddakji, the Vietnamese horse racing game cờ cá ngựa, and Mongolian shagai (knucklebones) – along with additional activities hosted by family and community volunteers. Families also enjoyed a mix of treats and refreshments, including Mongolian buuz (dumplings) and milk tea, popcorn chicken and mandarins, boba tea, and a photo booth to capture the night.

GGCP began as a staff conversation about how well Glen Grove knew its community. Founding members — Aurora Joaquin, Natalie Ceprnich, Marie Chang-Pisano, Katelyn Kelleher, Katharine Ellison, Justin Johnson, and Sylvia Górski Duarte — set out to learn what families celebrate and what matters most about those celebrations, and this event reflected that purpose in action.

D34 Mongolian Bilingual Parent Association (BPAC); Hoang Phuc Lion Dance; Snapshots by Flores; Glenview Public Library; Family Service Center; Glenview Youth Services; GBS Mongolian American Student Organization (MASO); GBS Korean American Student Association (KASA); Taste of Mongolia & Tugo Tea House; Love Boba Cafe; Moji Modeling Agency and their models; the Yang/Shang Family and Leong/Rudnicki Family; Misheel Gantulkhuur and family for balloon art; our amazing Gator dancers; the Otgonbaatar Family for their musical performance; our bilingual liaisons and teachers across District 34; D34 staff and Bilingual Pathways student volunteers; and our GGCP student helpers who prepared materials and decorations.

Special thanks to the Title I Federal grant designated for BPAC, which helped make this celebration possible. Thank you again for helping Glen Grove celebrate — we can’t wait for next year.

Click here to watch the video montage from the event.