Make a Dragon!

There is something about dragons. Nothing else manages to be so magical, beautiful, fascinating, scary and wonderful at once.

Yesterday my two year old, Victoria, announced that she wanted to do "a dragon craft" so we improvised one up. Here's what we did...

You'll need:
Several sheets of full-size paper
scissors
glue, paste or rubber cement
bits of tin foil, paper, cloth or brightly
colored plastic bags (we used the blue part of a bread bag and the orange part of a potato chip bag) or anything else you can think of

Using most of a sheet of paper for each, cut out

a body, head, tail, and wing (or two, depending on the angle). Use another sheet to cut out legs and one or two flames. We made our dragon freehand, but you can use one of the dragons in the coloring pages below for a template if you like.

Cut the scraps of paper and such into different shapes and let your child glue the pieces all over the dragon to decorate him or her (our dragon was a lady). Glue the body parts together.

Cut out eyes, irises, nostrils, and horns and attach. You can also paint or draw on your dragon. Once it's done, you can tape him to a wall or window, or frame.

To continue with the dragon theme, I highly recommend Jack Prelutsky's "The Dragons Are Singing Tonight." The artwork is wonderful and the poems are silly, scary, fun and magical. If you have other dragon books you recommend, please let me know!

A great poem about dragons is Ogden Nash's "Custard the Cowardly Dragon." I have it in "The Golden Book of Poetry" from when I was a little girl, but it's widely published. It's absolutely darling and worth a search!

For dragon coloring pages, here's a site with a range of types.

You could also make kids into dragons. Cut out some wings from a box and decorate them. Then cut notches in them and thread ribbon through to tie them to the child's arms or body. Kids can even make up plays, songs and dances about dragons. Have fun!


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All works on this site Alicia Bayer unless otherwise noted.
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