Good Luck Dragons

3rd Grade students made good luck dragons in honor of Chinese New Year.  Using recycled items; egg cartons, paper towel tubes and paper cups, students created an armature for their dragons.

Foil was fashioned into a tail and eyes were made from recycled paper that was balled up and taped on the head.  The next step was to paper mache the dragons' body- I gave the students a choice of red, yellow or green, but any colors would do.  Once the paper mache was dry, it was time to decorate.  This part was so much fun!  The students used metallic markers to draw the scales on the body, tissue paper fire was placed in the dragon's mouth, eyes and nostrils were painted on, and horns were made from pipe cleaners.  The wings were made from gold metallic scrapbooking paper I purchased.  The students were shown how to fan fold their triangles to create the wings, then we put glue along the top edge of the wings and dipped them into glitter, to give it an extra magical touch.  Claws were made from scraps of black construction paper.  

The students enjoyed the PowerPoint on Chinese Dragons, learned a little bit about another cultures' traditions, and had a blast creating their sculptures.  This project required three art classes, that would normally last 50 minutes, but since I don't have a class that comes in right after this one, the three classes were all extended ones.  Otherwise, this project probably would have taken about 4-5 classes to complete.  For this reason, after the second class I made these with, I saw the writing on the wall and decided to do oil pastel drawings of dragons with the rest of the third grade classes.  I'll do a post on that project soon.