We’ve prepared a fantastic Chinese New Year activity for you and your children: a Chinese New Year Dragon Craft that you can put together on your own. This cheerful and unusual dragon colouring page is wonderfully flexible – your dragon can be short and little… or incredibly loooooooong and large! It’s one collection of colouring pages offering plenty of ways to personalise the design. Best of all, it’s another completely free resource, created in partnership with Learning Resources.
Chinese New Year Paper Craft: Build your own Dragon
Disclaimer: this project has been created together with Learning Resources (a website offering enjoyable educational materials), allowing us to provide this wonderful Christmas colouring page toy at NO COST!
As we mentioned, this is an especially enjoyable activity because it features a dragon that can be made as short or as long as you like…
… and it also provides an opportunity to discover another culture and its customs while building fine motor abilities (colouring, scissor use and gluing skills). This Chinese dragon is appropriate for children of every age group – you can use it with preschoolers, early years, KS1 and KS2! It makes an excellent classroom project or addition to a Chinese New Year bulletin board display.
We created this dragon printable PDF specifically to celebrate the Year of the Dragon!
Learning opportunities
There are plenty of reasons why we enjoy this Assemble Your Own Chinese New Year Dragon Project:
- You can enjoy colouring and making crafts with your children or pupils. It’s a lovely mindfulness activity, and you could listen to a relevant audiobook at the same time
- You can present and investigate subjects such as New Year customs and the different or similar ways New Year is observed across cultures and countries. Keep in mind that Lunar New Year is celebrated in numerous countries and is not exclusive to Chinese culture.
- While colouring, you can teach the ideas of primary and secondary colours, as well as warm and cool colour groups.
- You can discuss the concept of space and consider how to arrange the dragon and its different sections most effectively within a particular area.
- They are excellent for strengthening fine motor abilities (for example, colouring and cutting out the Dragon pieces).
How to display this Dragon Craft
This Year of the Dragon activity was created to work in spaces of any size… whether you’re at home or in a classroom – simply make it as “large” or as “small” as you prefer. We feel this is an especially enjoyable dragon project for groups to complete together. Students can each colour separate sections of the dragon printable before joining everything together! They would look wonderful:
- On a classroom door (perhaps every class could have a dragon in a different colour?)
- As part of a Chinese New Year classroom bulletin board display
- Along the classroom walls
- Or even hanging in the window as a sun catcher.
Extension ideas/ alternative ways to use this dragon craft
Print the dragon on colored paper
Pressed for time? If you’d still like to include this dragon craft in a teacher’s Chinese New Year display, print it on red paper and cut it out! It will still look fantastic.
Add Chinese New Year messages
Looking for a writing activity? Ask students to add Happy New Year greetings to the dragon’s body!
Turn the dragon into a maths activity
Would you like to include maths? You can also use the dragon’s body for counting exercises or other maths tasks. With early years children, make number-bond dragons using 10 sections (perhaps print the body halves on contrasting coloured paper, with 7 red and 3 yellow). For KS1 or KS2, you could even include sums or times tables.
Change your printer settings
Print the resource at “half size” to create a small dragon that can be cut out, assembled and included in project work or pupils’ exercise books. You could even add it to greeting cards.
Handprint dragon
Although we absolutely LOVE the dancing dragon’s body pieces, you can simply use the dragon’s face, tail and feet and pair them with children’s handprints to create a handprint dragon as well! This is a favourite way to make dragons in the classroom. If you try the Chinese Dragon Handprints, please DO tag us on Instagram with your pictures!
Supplies needed for the Assemble Your Own Dragon Project:
- Our free Chinese New Year Dragon printable,
- Paper,
- Colouring pens, crayons markers or paints,
- Scissors,
- Glue,
- Blue Tack or double sided tape,
- Optional: additional decorative materials, such as torn paper/ tissue paper, eco-friendly glitter, sequins etc
Head over to download your FREE Assemble Your Own Chinese New Year Dragon printable.
How to make your Chinese New Year Dragon:
1.) Download the dragon printable! Begin by colouring each separate part of the dragon’s body. Spend some extra time on the dragon’s head and tail.. the body can be coloured quickly… or printed directly onto coloured paper if you need to save time or are using it for a teacher’s display. We selected red and yellow paint here to create a warm, fiery effect.
2.) Once the colouring is finished, cut out each individual dragon body piece. This gives students a wonderful chance to develop their scissor skills. Don’t be concerned if the cuts aren’t
polish your completed Chinese dragon craft, and it will still look absolutely adorable!
3.) Select a location, such as a notice board, classroom door, classroom wall, bedroom wall, or window, where you would like to showcase the dragon. Before attaching the dragon pieces to the wall, arrange them first on a level surface, such as a table. If you think you require additional pieces, simply print more and include them in your dragon. You may also flip the separate dragon pieces around before colouring them if you want the dragon to face the opposite direction.
Enjoy putting together your very own dragon!
For a Chinese New Year challenge:
- If your class builds the dragon as a group project, how long could you make it? You could hold a competition by dividing the class into several teams and creating multiple dragons.
- Create two dragons, one using warm colours and the other using cool colours, then let them dance together along the wall!
- Design a dragon using every colour of the rainbow!
I hope this fantastic Dragon Printable PDF resource brings you plenty of enjoyment and that you see the many learning and teamwork possibilities offered by this wonderful free printable Chinese New Year activity. We would LOVE to see your dragons, so please remember to tag me on Instagram or email me photographs of your dragons!! I’m so excited to see them! Sending you my very best wishes for your Lunar New Year Celebrations!
Don’t forget, we have plenty of other Chinese New Year Craft Ideas, such as a free printable dragon puppet, which is ideal for classroom dragon dances, paper plate dragon twirlers, and traditional red Chinese lanterns!
