Craft Ideas for the Chinese Year of Dragon

Chinese new year is coming… This year it will arrive on Jan 23. It will be a special year — a year of Dragon!

According Wikipedia, “In contrast to European dragons, which are considered evil, Chinese dragons traditionally symbolize potent and auspicious powers, particularly control over water, rainfall, hurricane, and floods. The dragon is also a symbol of power, strength, and good luck. With this, the Emperor of China usually uses the dragon as a symbol of his imperial power.”

Children are generally interested and fascinated with dragons. So I am sharing with you some of the dragon crafts I came across when I was searching for relevant information.

1. Chinese Dragon Mask from firstpalette.com

Materials Needed are

• A4 or Letter size card stock
• Any coloring or painting material
• Elastic string
• Scissors
• Hole punch
• Scotch tape
• Crepe paper strips (optional)

The dragon mask template can be found here.

2. Pull-Along Dragon Toy from firstpalette.com

Materials needed are:

• Paper cups or yoghurt cups
• Construction paper or printable
  card stock
• Poster paint or acrylic paint
• Paint brush
• Crayons or oil pastels
• Jingle bell
• Beads
• String
• Glue gun
• Hole punch
• Scissors
• Scotch tape
• Pencil
• Small coins

The pull-along dragon toy template can be found here.

3. Dragon coloring or dragon mask from http://dltk-kids.com

This cute dragon image can be used for little children to color or for older children to make a nice mask.

The templates are available in .

4. Chinese dancing dragon Puppet from craftjr.com

Materials Needed:

• colored pencils or crayons
• construction paper for the body
• printout of the template
• wooden kebab skewers

It is quite simple project, even toddlers can handle it. With the addition of wooden kebab skewers, it can turn into a nicely dancing dragon puppet.

The head and tail template can be found here.

5. Chinese dragon coloring pages from fantasyjr.com

If you look for coloring pages for young children. You can find several high quality ones here .