Chinese New Year Dragon Puppet - Low Ink

Download Chinese Dragon Puppet

Not only are we learning about Chinese New Year in our homeschooling adventures, we have done some activities for it in our Girl Scouting adventures as well.  Last week our girls made an awesome Chinese New Year dragon and learned the dragon dance  - it was a HUGE hit.  The only downfall was that everyone did not get to take home their own dragon.  So, this week we made mini Chinese dragon puppets.  I originally found the idea at Crazy Mommy's blog through Pintrest (I could write love poetry for Pintrest!).  I modified the original printable by cleaning up some of the background (it was printing gray so it was using a lot more ink than need be) and making is smaller so that we could make it with ribbon instead of streamers.

The process for making the dragon is pretty simple and they are so neat when finished.

Supplies You Will Need

• dragon template printed onto cardstock
• 1 1/2 inch wide ribbon
• 2 popcicle sticks
• Fast Grab (or Quick Dry) Tacky Glue
• scissors
• markers, crayons, colored pencils, etc

Prep Work

I designed this so that two dragons printed on each page - I hate wasting cardstock and my printer needs each page hand fed when printing on cardstock so this made it go much faster.  Just cut the templates in half before handing them out.  Cut the ribbon into lengths about one foot.  The ribbon we purchased from Hobby Lobby made 12 puppets per spool (which breaks down to 34 cents per dragon for the ribbon).

Directions

Students (or Scouts) color their own dragon heads and tails and cut them out.  Then using Tacky Glue (the Fast Grab is awesome - the girls were playing with their puppets as soon as they were done gluing and they didn't fall apart!) glue the head to one end of the ribbon and the tail to the other.  Flip over your dragon and glue one popcicle stick behind the head and the other behind the tail.  The first dragon I made I didn't glue this way and his poor head was flopping like he had a broken neck - not so great.

You can also forgo the popcicle sticks and have a pretty cool bookmark.  I would laminate the head and tail pieces before gluing it all together to make it extra strong and possibly cut down the length of the ribbon a bit.

Chinese New Year Matching Game

Download CNY Matching Game

Okay, first, accept my apologies for not posting a resource yesterday.  We are knee deep into Girl Scout cookie season (ya wanna buy some cookies?) and I had to get all of my troop paperwork in order yesterday.  So, to make up for it I'm sharing two resources today.  (c:  I've already posted the dragon board game printable and this is a simple matching game printable. 

This game has been created using my Chinese New Year clipart that you can purchase over at my website www.lilredschoolhouse.org just in case you would like to create your own Chinese New Year stuffs.

Please comment if you download so I know what you like and what you don't.

Chinese New Year Dragon Game Board

Download CNY Game Board

When I found this uber cute Chinese New Year game board I knew we had to use it for something.  At first I was going to make it a multiplication game but that seems a little, well, boring.  I've been working on a few ideas - a Chinese New Year trivia game or maybe something with science, I don't know yet.  But, I wanted to share the blank game board with you before Chinese New Year was over.  So, here it is (c:  I've made a set of cards to match, just in case you might need them.  Sorry, there isn't a low ink version of this one - I didn't draw the dragon and I don't feel right sharing something I didn't work on here.  Thanks for understanding (c:

If you have any ideas on what kind of game to turn this into pretty please leave me a comment and share.  Thanks (c:

Chinese New Year Envelope - Low Ink Version

Download CNY Money Envelope - Low Ink

A very sweet friend of mine (hello, Mrs. Valerie!) asked about a black and white version of my Chinese New Year money envelope printable.  Well, when I made the plain paper envelope I just traced my printed color envelope, but that's not very ink effective, now is it?  So, I quickly went to work making a black and white low ink version of this printable to share with you all. 

So, what do you think?  Would you like to see more "low ink" or black and white printables?  Leave a comment and let me know - and if there's something that you would like to see, just let me know.  If I can do it I would be happy to add it for you (c:

Gong Xi Fa Cai -- Happy Chinese New Year

One of my favorite parts of teaching is covering units about other cultures.  During the next couple of weeks we are learning about China to celebrate Chinese New Year.  For today I'm sharing a crafty creation that you can make -  a red money envelope.  I tried printing mine with the red coloring and wasn't a huge fan of my printer's skills (note to self - NEVER buy another Kodak printer).  So, I used my cut out version and made a template for plain red paper (which I would feed through my printer and use the black and white template, but my printer can't seem to understand any paper color other than white.  One more reason for the above note to self).  However, I loved the worn look that the coins had so I was pretty happy with the way those printed.  In any case, I'm sharing with you my designed envelope and you are free to print it as it or use it for a template if you like.  It will print much brighter with a good printer (I know this because I printed similar things with my Lexmark a few years ago and they were gorgeous).

Download the CNY Envelope Creation

While researching Chinese New Year we found out that two is considered a lucky number and gifts come in twos.  I would be adding an uber cute wrapped orange with this (that I found through Pintrest - my new obsession), but Doodle Bug doesn't care for oranges - even if they are part of the symbolism of the holiday. 

So, instead we'll stick with the paper envelope and the paper coins.  We'll be doing more fun things for Chinese New Year so come back and visit for more ideas.