Red Dragon Chinese Puppets

 2nd grade is learning about Chinese New Year. 

Students read along with the read aloud of The Story of Nian, a Chinese New Year Story.

After the story, students created their own unique dragon paper puppet. This project took students almost 3 days to compete their puppets. 

Day 1: Students painted 2 paper plates for the mouth. They drew a big V at the end of a long red construction paper. Students were told to have their paper tall or portrait. Then on the tops of the drawn V, students drew 2 vertical lines all the way up to the top of their paper. They used this shape for the body. Once, the body was cut. Students did the same technique on a slightly smaller green paper for the belly. Once both papers were glued . Students yellow scrap paper  into horizontal lines on the belly. Students stored all their cut paper and puppet parts in a gallon zip lock bag with their name on it.

Day 2: Students cut their painted plates in half. They placed them in a manner that created 2 pockets. I and a student helper, helped hot glue them in a manner to create the puppets mouth. I was inspired to use this technique from a great video on making a frog puppet (see below). While students plates were being glue, students were shown how to curl cut paper using a pencil and how to cut out fun organic shapes using zig zag and wavy lines.  Students cut out organic shapes for fuzzy eye brows and various organic shapes for their dragons face. They curled scrap paper for tongues and fire.  

Day 3: Students fan folded the puppets body and assemble all parts. Students choose 2 pom poms for eyes. By table color, they came and with help hot glued the pom poms and eyes on the upper portion of the mouth piece. Students used tacky glue to glue all fuzzy eyebrow shapes and decorative parts to their work. Students had option to glue 2 small pom poms for nostrils. 

They were all thrilled to take these puppets home. They really loved this lesson and learned a great deal on using paper to create 3D art through the use of paper manipulation such as folding, curling, quelling, creating pop up tabs etc. 

How to create a paper frog puppet tutorial. This great video helped inspire me on how to create the face for the students dragon puppet. Please check it out! and give it a thumbs up!

Dragon Puppet Supplies

Red Construction Paper 

Green Construction Paper

Card Stock Scraps/ Scrap Paper

Big Pom Poms/ mini Pom Poms

Google Eyes

Low Temp Glue Gun/ Low Temp Glue Sticks

Scissors

Paper Plates

Acrylic Red, Pink, Green / Foam Brush for easy quick painting

Sharpie/ Gallon Ziplock Bag - storage