My Pet Dragon
Kiddo wants to be a princess but a knight in shiny armour will not be here without the threat of a dragon so says the ‘fairy fairy books’. So she decided that she’d have a pet dragon, wait out the day for a hapless knight to come galloping by and maybe she’d prefer to have him toasted for turning up 5 minutes late.
What you need are:
- 1 longish cardboard box
- 3 toilet rolls
- 1 drinking straw
- colour paper
- coloring material
- scissors/ craft knife
- 4 pipe cleaners
- brass fasteners
- twine (about 1 metre)
- sticky tape
- glue
Instructions:
- Find a longish box and cut it into 2 (length-wise). Flatten the parts and use only the inner blank surface for the craft. They will be the upper and lower jaws of the dragon.
- Get kiddo to draw the dragon’s teeth along the sides of the cardboard. Then she’s to proceed to trim out the teeth.
- Then get kiddo to choose the colours of her pet, draw out details such as scales, eyes, horns, wings etc while the following construction bits gets done.
- Punch holes on the upper and lower jaws. The upper jaw will require 5 holes (2 nostrils, 2 cheeks, 1 neck), the lower jaw will need 2 holes (for cheeks).
- Secure a drinking straw on the upper jaw.
- Secure 3 pipe cleaners to the lower jaw. Twist them to make it look like the dragon’s fiery breath. Kiddo can do this too.
- Secure a coin near the pipe cleaners. It is to act as weight for the dropping of the jaw.
- Trim bits of the sides of the lower jaw to allow greater angle of opening.
- Make a small slit in near the pipe cleaners on the lower jaw and pull through a piece of twine. Knot on one end and secure it at the bottom of the lower jaw.
- Pull the other end of the twine through the straw and toilet roll. Fold in part of the toilet roll to allow more space for the jaws to open.
- Fasten a toilet roll (it’d have a hole punched near one end) to the back of the dragon’s head with a brass fastener.
- Fasten the sides (cheeks) of the jaws with brass fasteners.
- Fold the teeth on the lower jaw inwards to allow the jaws to close fully.
- Extend the neck and body of the dragon with 2 more toilet rolls. Pull the twine out fully through the end of the toilet rolls. It should be comfortably long enough for kiddo to pull and release.
- Get kiddo to ready the parts she drew/made/cut and secure them onto the dragon with glue or sticky tape.
- Make a little loop with a pipe cleaner at the pulling end of the twine. This allows kiddo to better manipulate the mouth movement of the dragon.
- If time permits, make a small cardboard knight cutout…hehehehe…..