Chinese Dragon Puppet Craft

2012 is here and its the year of the dragon. This is a very cool Chinese dragon puppet craft you can make to celebrate. The kids will have loads of fun dancing around with their dragons.

Materials:

• dragon template below or make your own
• 2 kabob skewers, chopsticks, or Popsicle sticks
• red construction paper
• colored pencils
• scissors
• glue

Directions:

1. Color and cut out the dragon and tail piece from the template or make your own from construction paper.
2. Accordion fold a long piece of construction paper.
3. Fold the head and ail pieces and glue to the construction paper body strip.
4. Glue to 2 kebob skewers(be careful!) or disposable chopsticks.

Here's the template site for the one above.

http://www.craftjr.com/dragon-paper-craft/

Here's a simpler, do it yourself version that looks great, too.

New Years Dragon Paper Plate Craft

According to the Chinese almanac, 2012 is the year of the Dragon. The image for this craft is a big dancing Chinese dragons at festivals or the Chinese lion dance with two men inside. Here's a cute New Years Dragon puppet craft you can make from a paper plate.

Materials:

• 1 paper plate
• 3egg carton cups
• black, red, and white construction paper
• red and gold paint
• black marker
• glue
• scissors

Directions:

1. Cut out three cups from an egg carton. Paint them green, inside and out. Allow to dry.
2. On the bottom of a paper plate, paint the center gold and the rim red. Allow to dry.
3. Cut 2 black paper rectangles. Cut slits on one side and glue onto 2 green egg cups for eyelashes.
4. Cut 2 small white circles to fit in the bottom of the cups for eyes. Draw a black pupil with a marker.
5. On the outside of the 3rd green paper egg cup, draw 2 dots for a nose.
6. Fold the paper plate in half. Cut slits along the rim if desired for a frill effect.
7. Cut out a large red tongue longer than half the paper plate so it sticks out the front. Glue inside the mouth.
8. Cut out big white triangles for teeth and glue them on the upper lip.
9. Glue the eyes and nose on top of the head.

  Here's the original craft at DLTK

http://www.dltk-holidays.com/china/mfold-dragon.htm

New Years Shaker Craft

This is a very easy craft to to to make some noise for New Years.

Materials:

• 2 paper cups
• various colored tissue paper
• tape
• glue
• raw beans or popcorn
• glitter (optional)

Directions:

1. Fill the bottom of one cup with raw beans or popcorn.
2. Glue another cup on top, mouth to mouth and then secure with tape.
3. Glue on little squares of multi colored tissue paper like confetti. You could also spread glue on and add glitter.
4. Cut 2 sheets of colored tissue paper into strips, leaving the top intact.
5. Glue and wrap the tissue paper around the bottom of the cups, creating tassels at both ends. Allow to dry.

2012 New Year Dragon Craft

 Happy New Year. 2012 is the year of the dragon. Here's a cute little dragon craft you can make using hand prints. I've shown two different versions. Version 1 is for older students and they cut and paste the hand prints and was made by my nearly 7 year old daughter Hana. Version 2 is for littler ones who can't control scissors so well yet and make hand prints with paint. This one was made by my 4 year old daughter Rika. They had so much fun making them. I've chosen yellow and orange for the dragon colors, but you can choose any colors you want. The 2012 dragon is supposed to be black, but I didn't think that was very pretty.

Materials:

Version 1

• 1 sheet of white craft or construction paper
• head, legs, and tail cut outs from green construction paper
• mane and tail piece from red construction paper
• yellow and orange construction paper for hand prints
• two small white circles for eyes or eye stickers
• scissors
• glue
• red and black marker
• dragon template from Activity Village UK

Version 2

• substitute yellow and orange paint for paper to make hand prints

Directions:

1. Cut out 1 head, 1 tail, 2 legs, 1 mane and one tail piece from green and red construction paper respectively.
2. Trace two sets of hand prints on yellow and orange paper and cut out.
3. Glue 4 hand prints on the white paper for the dragon's body.
4. Glue on the mane, head, tail, leg , and eye pieces.
5. Draw black on the eyes, red fire, and "2012 Year of the Dragon" or other message with markers.

Variations

You could glue on dazzles or sequence for scales.

To make an impressive bulletin board display, put all the students hand prints together to make one big long dragon. Have fun.