Make a Chinese Dragon

Here we show you how to make this brightly coloured Chinese Dragon in easy steps. His flexible body will move up and down like the real thing and remember to give him a friendly face because Chinese Dragons aren't fierce fire-breathing creatures.

You will need:

• 2 strips of red and yellow or orange paper (75cm long and 3cm wide)
• orange and green card
• yellow, white, red and orange paper
• a pencil
• sequins
• glue
• scissors

What you do:

1. Cut out the dragon's head shape from an 8cm by 8cm square of red paper.
2. Cut an 8cm by 3cm rectangle from a piece of green paper and snip wavy lines almost to the full length to make the dragon's beard. Glue the beard to the back of the chin of the dragon's head.
3. Cut some teeth from white paper and stick them just above the beard. Cut out two eye shapes also from the white paper and glue them on together with further shapes, as in the photograph, to decorate the dragon's head. Add sequins for eyes and nostrils.
4. Glue the ends of the two long strips of red and yellow paper together at right angles.
5. Make a concertina body for the dragon by folding the bottom strip over the top strip and then the top strip over the bottom strip repeatedly. Be sure to glue the ends together well.
6. Glue the dragon's head to the body.
7. Cut some narrow strips of red and yellow paper for the tail. Curl these carefully between your thumb and some rounded scissors and glue them to the end of the dragon.