thinnking day swaps

Hello Friends! Last week I was super busy helping my daughter’s girl scout troop prepare for thinking day. We were representing the country China. I thought I’d share our adventures and ideas with you in case you are getting ready for Thinking Day, Chinese New Year or if you just want to make a Chinese dragon costume.

I was hoping to figure out how to record a voice-over for this video so I could explain how we made the costume but I could not so I put a supply list and brief instructions in the video description on the You tube watch page. Here you can see the dragon in action!

The head was made of cardboard boxes covered in corrugated paper and crepe paper party streamers. The tail was made of 3 red rectangle disposable tablecloths sewed together with my sewing machine (yes, we sewed them, can you believe that worked?!?) and spray painted with scales. I attached the tail to the head with carpet tape. Again, for more details read the description under the video here. Here are a couple closer pics I took in my studio:

The girls researched the country and made the Tri-fold display. We served rice and tea.

We had Chinese money on display and the girls made swaps that were rice and toothpicks glued into bottle caps to look like bowls of rice with chopsticks, then they were glued to fun-foam place mats. there was a magnet on the back and the year (2014) on the front.

For our craft we did paper-folding. Origami is a Japanese term however the Chinese have a tradition of paper-folding as well, they generally made boats and hats.

The girls taught other girl scouts to make these paper boats.

The girls also learned how to make a Chinese throwing star but we soon realized that it was too advanced a craft for the amount of time we had.

I made this tutorial for Chinese New Year back in January, it would also be a good project for thinking day, either as a decoration, an activity (if you have a long craft time) or to use in the performance.

Supplies to make the Chinese Dragon and the above paper drum craft can be found at Papermart. A great place to check out when you need craft, party or packaging supplies in bulk! I hope you enjoyed this post and hopefully it gave you some new ideas! Thanks for stopping by and til next time happy crafting!