Celebrate Lunar New Year with this cardboard craft for kids! Children will enjoy creating and playing with these dragon puppets!
In Chinese culture, dragons are a symbol of good luck, strength, health.
They are also an important element of the annual Lunar New Year celebration.
This cardboard craft not only develops fine motor skills and introduces the art element of texture, but it can also be used as a puppet.
Here’s how we made these cardboard dragon puppets.
Supplies:
- 2 wooden skewers
- Scissors
- Crayons or markers
- Dragon templates (download your free copy here)
- Tagboard or cardboard
- Pencil
- Duct tape or glue
- 3″ x 12″ strip of paper
Directions:
- Make a copy of the dragon templates. Use scissors to cut out the templates.
- Use a pencil to trace the templates onto cardboard or tagboard.
- Use scissors to carefully cut out the traced shapes.
- Use crayons or markers to decorate your dragon, making it your own!
- Accordion fold the strip of paper. To do this, fold the paper in half widthwise. Fold the halves in half, folding up to the middle. Fold in half again, and then again, creating evenly sized accordion folds.
- Tape a skewer onto the back of each dragon segment.
- Tape the accordion folded strip of paper onto the back of each dragon segment. This will be the body of your dragon puppet.
- Enjoy playing with your cardboard puppet!
This cardboard craft is a sample of art projects included in the Chinese Zodiac Animal Art Pack. The pack contains 12 activities to help your little ones learn about the animals of the Chinese Zodiac and Chinese culture. Purchase the pack here.
Needing another cardboard craft for kids? Check out this blog post on creating nature portraits with cardboard. This activity can be used during all four seasons and is a great way to get kids engaged in the outdoors.
Happy creating!
