One day Dragons

Every now and then I hit a huge dilema.  I want to do a project that goes with a specific holiday, but the last project took too long and I am left with one day to fit in a project.  For some projects that is just fine, but then there are projects like todays project where it should have been done in two periods, but I became the drill sargent and forced it into one. 

Of course it becomes the most stressful 40 minutes in my life, (and I am sure that is not good on me) but sometimes I think it is good to push the kids out of their comfort zones. 

Anyways, I decided that the 3rd graders needed to do something for the Chinese New Year, (which is monday).  I love Chinese New Year and I love dragons, which is what the symbol for next  year is, so I couldn't let this opportunity pass me by.

So to accomplish this goal of a one day dragon I went completely away from my normal routine and pre-cut all of the paper and I even made stencils for the head.  I hate using stencils but I wanted them to not get so frustrated with trying to draw the head.  After they cut out the stenciled head, we then took squares of paper and folded all the sides and cut a slit so that they would fold into boxes.  Then we cut out eyes and teeth and then I did let them do anything else they wanted to do to their dragons.  I even brought out tissue paper ribbons and glitter. 

But in the end they pulled it out and they actually came out pretty good.

Some of them look kind of vicious in the pictures, but they didn't look that fierce in person.