Did you know this is the most celebrated holiday in the world? Here’s a kids Chinese New Year painting craft that breathes fire. Well, not fire, but fun. We adapted this from a thumbprint painting activity at Fun Handprint Art.
At this time of year, you may be fortunate enough to get up close to a Chinese Dragon parade. There will be bright colors, lots of drums and cymbals, and waves of movement as the dragon dances along. Either before or after, kids can make their own dragon with the colors and movement. If you have any little bells, drums, shakers, or other noise makers from the holidays, then they recreate that part too.
This is a wonderfully easy craft using paint dabbers. Just like the spot that an X marks (for this series of posts using the letters of the alphabet, these spots mark a dragon. To start, about the middle on one side of the paper, kids paint a spot with two more just below like a triangle. This makes the head of the dragon. Continuing on down, they add a few sports to be a neck. Little Sister slid the dabber to be a line for the neck of her dragon. The next part is to paint lots of spots in the dragon’s middle, like a hump or mountain shape. After that, kids dab a long line to be the tail.
Little Sister’s tail curved along the edge of the paper, back across the top, and curved over to meet the top of the hump. She was really into the activity. Big Sister only dabbed a small tail and then wanted to do all the colors of the rainbow. She doesn’t have the roy-g-biv order or the indigo but has the other colors. Once dry, kids can draw on some legs and add an eye or they might want to leave their kids Chinese New Year painting craft just as it is.
Sometimes, there is a lion dance, with a large and colorfully decorated head of a lion and only the legs of the 2 dancers showing. The dragon is lifted high off the ground with many dancers carrying it on poles. Will your family watch, participate or celebrate Chinese New Year? What will you do?
To make the wings, we found a large t-shirt at the thrift store. A quick cut up the front to the neck band turned the front into dragon wings. Little Sister slipped this on over her head and arms. It wasn’t pretty but it was simple, fast, and very inexpensive. Since dragons are imaginary, they can be any color. This one is purple.