Chinese New Year Craft for Kids: Dragon

The Chinese New Year is filled with many different activities and events for the whole family. During the Chinese New Year, there are many craft activities that children can do to symbolize the Chinese New Year celebration and to learn about the holiday. If you want your child to make a dragon for the Chinese New Year festivities, here is a great simple way to make one.

For the Chinese New Year dragon craft you will need some construction paper, long sheets of paper, crepe paper in a lot of colors, scissors, colored markers and a glue stick. You can get all of these supplies at your local retail store or craft store for about 20 dollars. You will then need to find a picture of a dragon that is happy and not angry or sad, you can find this picture on the Internet or you can find a stencil of a dragon in the store you could purchase. You would then use the picture of the dragon as the face of your dragon and you would glue the picture onto a piece of construction paper. Once you have glued the stencil or picture on the piece of construction paper, you need to think about building the body and head of the dragon.

The next step is to lay out the long sheets of paper on a hard surface so you can roll it up to form a half circle. The half circle will become the dragon's head and body so the next step is to decorate the paper. Use markers and other materials to create the body and cut out scales and wings from construction paper using glue to glue them to the main part of the dragon. Then, use the crepe paper to make streamers along the sides and off of the back of the dragon's body. The streamers are designed to make the dragon look more real as your child moves the dragon around. The dragon holders, who are the people who will hold and move the dragon, then need to be in a straight line standing on one side of the paper. The dragon holders should then bend over and pull the paper over their sides to that the center can rest over their head and they can hold one side of paper in one hand and the other side of the paper in the opposite hand.

That is how you make a Chinese New Year dragon and then you can start having fun with it by starting to walk. Once you have everyone in place and they start walking it will make the dragon come to life and seem like it is dancing. You can let your child do this craft on their own but they will probably need your help printing out a Chinese dragon head or stenciling the dragon head. Just make sure to always supervise your child when they are doing craft activities and make sure you are around to help walk the dragon. This is a good craft idea to help your child better understand the Chinese New Year and the importance of the dragon to the Chinese culture.