Fantastical dragons for Chinese New Year

Dragons rush out at Chinese New Year in parades, stories and songs.

Kids love Chinese dragons – they are colourful,exciting, noisy and enormous!

It’s a chance to pretend to be something extraordinary, and can later lead onto reading about Dragons in older stories like” The Dragon of an Ordinary Family” by Margaret Mahy and Helen Oxenbury.

Stories and Songs for Preschool Dragon Storytime.

Grace Lin has a book called “Red is a Dragon, a book of colours” from Chronicle books.

The same author has a Chinese New Year book called “Bringing in the New Year” with a dragon parade at the end.

The Australian online bookshop The Kids Bookshop has more information here.

They are both bright and colourful to share with younger children as well.

If you have older children there are some exciting books to share together here.

http://www.planetjinxatron.com/2014/09/kids-books-about-dragons-that-adults-can-love-too.html

Download these easy rhymes and finger plays to do after the story or video.

Thanks to Perpetual Preschool for these dragon rhymes that we can see kids dancing around with.

Dragon Dance Song (Tune: “Mary Had A Little Lamb”)

We make masks to use with this song.

See the dragons dance and prance,

dance and prance, dance and prance.

See the dragons dance and prance on Chinese New Year’s Day.

See the dragons hop, hop, hop,

hop, hop, hop, hop, hop, hop.

See the dragons hop, hop, hop on Chinese New Year’s Day.

See the dragons shake their tails,

shake their tails, shake their tails.

See the dragons shake their tails on Chinese New Year’s Day.

See the dragons turn around,

turn around, turn around.

See the dragons turn around on Chinese New Year’s Day.

See the dragons go to sleep,

go to sleep, go to sleep.

See the dragons go to sleep on Chinese New Year’s Day.

(From Laure)

Chinese New Year Dragon song

There’s a great big dragon coming our way,
A great big dragon on this holiday, (march with others in a weaving line)
Let’s grab our lanterns and follow along,
Dancing and waving and singing a song. (dancing and waving while moving in a line)
There’s a great big dragon coming our way,
Hip, hip, hurray!

( From mj) http://www.perpetualpreschool.com/holiday_themes/chinese_newyear_songs.htm

And of course our favourite “Room on the Broom” by Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler has a dragon who wants to have “witch and chips for tea” – here he is.

Dragon puppets and masks.

Kids love puppets,why not have a dragon sock puppet for the storytelling session or maybe some masks. Activity village has a mixture of crafts, printables and activities, including a very cute red sock dragon puppet all ready to roar!

http://www.activityvillage.co.uk/search-results?_q=dragon

Dragon masks help the roars get louder…these DTLK pages print as A4 so could be used for dragon masks.

http://www.dltk-holidays.com/china/color/index.htm

Dragon craft

For an older child you can colour in and put the parts of a dragon together here.

Dragon game.

Human Dragon.

Have children line up in a row, putting their hands on each child’s shoulder in front.
The first child is the dragon’s head.
The last child is the tail.
The head tries to catch the tail with out the kids coming un-hooked.
Children can take turns being the head.
Play some chinese or dragon music , or shake some cymbals and bang some drums.
For younger children take it more slowly and add a couple of adults into the line.

Thanks to Child Care Lounge for activities and songs.

http://www.childcarelounge.com/season-theme/chinese-new-year.php

100 Stories Before School Celebrations page.

We have many more Chinese New Year ideas on our Pinterest page.

Sets of Chinese New Year pictures
Book lists
Rhythm and rhyme.

Dragon food.

And finally a real fire breathing dragon cake- AMAZING.

Imagine- a dragon “fire breathing” cake!

Easy to follow step by step photographs and instructions here .

Check out all the photos in the comments section of other dragon cakes made from this post.(Thanks to kitchenwench.)

If you want to find out more information for adults about Chinese New Year and Dragons have a look at Kid World Citizen’s post.Find out what each part of a dragon’s body is ( head of a camel, horns of a stag…),Mythology,and an explanation of the different dragon dances.