Children's Craft Ideas for Chinese New Year
The Chinese New Year is the most important holiday in China. The festivities celebrate the coming of the New Year and springtime. The celebrations include gift giving, traditional foods, parades and parties that can last all month long. The date varies each year, depending on the lunar calendar, but it typically falls between January 21 and February 20, according to kaboose.com.
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Dancing Dragon Toy
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New Year parades often feature dancing dragon toys, and they can be quite long in length. You can easily make a miniature dancing dragon toy that two children can play with in their own mock parade. Simply draw the face of a dragon and a tail on two pieces of white construction paper. Make these drawings colorful by using crayons, markers or even glitter and feathers. For the body, you will need to cut a narrow strip from a sturdy piece of paper, cutting it in half lengthwise would be a good size. You could even use a long piece of poster board to create an even longer dragon body or two pieces of paper glued or taped together. Fold the paper accordion style, and unfold it. Tape or glue one end to the head and one end to the tail of the dragon. Glue wooden skewers, plastic straws or chopsticks to the lower portion of the head and tail. The children will hold onto these, lifting them over their heads to create a whimsical dragon.
Firework Project
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Give each child a black or dark piece of construction paper. Have them use regular school glue to create stars, triangles, circles and other shapes that look like exploding fireworks. Allow them to sprinkle glitter on the glue while it is still wet. Instruct them to dump the excess glitter off the construction paper and back into the glitter container. They can use multi-colored glitter or use one color at a time, alternating the glue and another shade of glitter to create what looks like a sky full of colorful fireworks.
Firecracker Strings
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Some Chinese people believe that popping strings of firecrackers will ward off evil spirits, reports the Kaboose website. Give children some empty toilet paper rolls, and have them use red construction paper to cover the outside. They can do this by cutting squares out of the red paper and gluing them onto the toilet paper rolls. They can decorate the firecrackers with colored markers or use glitter and glue. Give them some long strands of white yarn. Have them glue one end of the yarn into one end of one of the firecrackers. They then glue the other end of the yarn into the end of another firecracker. They then take another piece of yarn and glue the end into the end of the second firecracker, opposite where they glued the first yarn end. Glue the end of the second piece of yarn to the end of another firecracker. They should do this repeatedly until they have a long string of firecrackers to use as decorations to help celebrate the Chinese New Year.
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- Photo Credit petit pétard image by Georges Lievre from Fotolia.com
