Firstly you will need to search your house for the materials required!

You will need:

coloured card, coloured paper, pipe cleaners, string, safety scissors, sticky tape, a ruler, a pen or pencil, plasticine or blu-tack, crepe paper, and some beads and cardboard tubing from kitchen roll (but these are optional).

Once you've found your bits it's time to get started!

STEP ONE

Cut out four shapes from the coloured card, to make the dragon’s body, neck, head and tail. You need two rectangles (one big, one small), and two trapeziums, like this...

Now your pieces of cardboard are cut to size and ready to roll!

STEP TWO

Cut a few strips of sticky tape ready, and roll up the neck and the body into tubes. Twist each tube twice, so that your tube is two sheets of card thick (nice and strong!), and then use tape to secure the tubes. Now roll up the tail piece, to make a cone shape, and stick it together.

Your rolled tubes should look like the pieces below once they're stuck together.

STEP THREE

Before you roll the head into a cone as well, get your crepe paper and scrunch it up to make a spurt of FLAMES! Stick this onto the narrow end of your head shape. Then roll into a cone so that the flames are coming out of the narrow end of your cone, and stick with tape. (You could also try making your flames with streamers, coloured foil from sweet wrappers, cellophane, or even feathers!)

Stick the flames onto the narrow edge of head cone

Roll the dragon head into a cone and stick with tape

You should now have four pieces as seen in the picture below

STEP FOUR

Now we need to make some holes for your puppet strings to attach to.

Use a sharp pencil, and put a piece of plasticine or blu-tack on the other side of the card as you press through so that you don’t hurt your finger!

You need to make holes on the dragon’s body – one on the top at the front of your tube, and one on the top at the back (these are for the head and tail); two on the bottom at the front, side by side, and two on the bottom at the back, side by side (these are for the legs); one larger hole on each side of the body (these are for the wings). Refer to the pictures to help you!

Pierce a hole near the top of the body for the head

Your pierced holes for the head and tail should look
like this on the body tube.

Rotate the tube through 180 degrees and pierce holes
for the legs on the underneath of the body tube.

Put two holes on either side of the tube for the wings.
In this picture you can see the two holes on the top
for the head and tail and the two holes on the bottom
for the legs.

Whilst we’re making all these holes, you’ll also need one in the tail at the wide end (anywhere near the edge will do), and two on the widest end of the head, on the top and bottom. These will have string threaded through them.

Put one hole similar to this picture for the tail cone.
Put two holes in the head cone. One on the top of the
tube and one on the bottom (like the picture)

STEP FIVE

Now that you’ve got all your shapes assembled with holes for the strings, it’s time to start putting your dragon together! Thread one pipe cleaner through each set of two holes on the bottom of your dragon’s body to make legs. You can then thread beads onto the legs to make feet (if you don’t have beads, you could bend the legs over at the bottom to make feet for your dragon)

Once both sets of pipe cleaners have been threaded through, your dragon
should look like this...

If you have beads you can now attach them to the pipe cleaners

STEP SIX

Measure out four pieces of string, each 60cm long.

This should be what you have so far

STEP SEVEN - THREADING

Thread the first piece of string through one of the wing holes on the dragon’s body, and tie a double knot on the end to keep it secure.

Do the same with your second piece of string and the second wing hole.

You now need to thread your third piece of string through the neck hole on the top of the dragon’s body tube. Thread it through from the outside into the dragon body, and then tie a double knot.

Then, you need to thread your neck tube onto the
string so that it sits on the body like the picture above.

 

Then thread the string through the holes on the bottom of the head piece, and push it down so that it sits on top of the neck.

(look at the picture for help!)

Your dragon puppet should now look like this...

With your last piece of string, thread this through the tail hole (this should now be the only empty hole left!), on the top of the dragon’s body. Thread it from the outside of the dragon’s body through to the inside (like you did with the head hole) Before you tie a double knot, thread the tail onto your string too. Tie the string to secure it.

STEP 7 - ALMOST THERE (TIME FOR THE WINGS!)

Now for the wings! Take a piece of coloured paper (about 15cm x 20cm), and fold it into a concertina, like a fan.

Cut it in half with safety scissors or ask an adult to help – these are your two wings!

 

Hold one edge of each wing closed and poke it into the hole on the side of the dragon’s body, keeping the piece of string that is already in there on top of the wing – this way, when you pick your dragon up by the strings, the wings won’t get in the way!

Your dragon puppet now has wings!

Once you have your wings in place, it’s time for the final step...

STEP EIGHT

You need a frame in the shape of an ‘+’ to tie your four strings to. We used some old kitchen roll tubes and a bit of fancy string work to tie them together (our crafter is an ex-girl-guide, go figure!) but you could use a couple of old chopsticks, pieces of wood, whatever you have to hand!

 

Tie each of the four strings to the ends of your frame, making sure they aren’t tangled up, and your dragon is ready to fly!

Make your dragon look super special by adding wobbly eyes, stickers, glitter, feathers, anything you fancy...like ours!

 

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