Chinese New Year Crafts

As it will soon be Chinese New Year, I had planned a whole week of activities for the children. We were going to talk about China, about the traditions of the New Year as well as talk about the Year of The Monkey and other things.

However, with one thing and another it hasn’t panned out that way and this morning, when I woke I should have known that the day wasn’t going to go quite to plan. I had been up in the night with Mr D (who wanted a drink) and Miss E (who had been woken by Mr D) as well as not being able to get comfortable. When Miss E woke at around 07:20 she came into bed and I knew she would soon be back asleep. I had a fleeting moment of guilt as I heard the door click shut as my husband left in the rain for work as I dozed off, snuggled up to Miss E in the warmth of the bed.

It wasn’t until I heard Mr D at around 08:45 that things took a nose dive. Miss E woke up, sat up reached out to me and was promptly sick, all over the two of us. I quickly grabbed towels as she continued being sick and tried to console her. We got changed and cleaned up and she was soon back in bed, fast asleep (where she remained for the entire day until I woke her at around 3pm).

My planned day of a library trip and Chinese New Year crafts were soon scuppered. Mr D and I did however managed to get a couple of things done that I had planned, and I think they have turned out pretty well.

First up we made this fab monkey. The template is from Twinkl – you can find it here. I’d printed this off the night before. In hind sight I should have printed this on thicker paper/thin card.

I explained to Mr D that it was the Year of the Monkey and we set about cutting out the template. If I was doing this again I think I would print a black and white version and let the children colour it in, they’re a little too young at the moment to be able to cut it themselves and it felt like I did a lot of the prep work. I stuck the pieces onto a piece of card and then Mr D glued on the monkey’s ears. We then set about folding the arms and legs. I demonstrated to him how to do it and he soon joined in. I was quite impressed with how well he managed to do this. He then glued the arms and legs to the monkey’s body and we added the hands and feet too.

Mr D loved this monkey and it really does look quite effective. It’s since gone to his room to sit on the side with some of his bears.

We then moved on to making a Chinese dragon. I had printed a template off last night (I can’t seem to find the site I got it from now though) and we set about colouring it in.

I coloured mine in and Mr D was watching me with interest. I find it fascinating to watch how his colouring skills are developing. He was very purposeful in trying to neatly colour in the Dragon’s eye and claws. In the past he would have just scribbled one colour on and said it was done. However he spent a good while colouring in and making marks on the dragon.Once we had finished we cut the dragon’s out and I cut a piece of A4 card into two halves and then folded into a concertina. Mr D added glue onto the edges and stuck to the dragon’s head and tail. We then added two craft sticks; one at either end. I added these with sticky tape rather than glue as that felt more secure.