Vietnamese New Year Craft: Make Your Own Dragon Parade for Tet

By Cindy Roberts

Dragon Parade

The purpose of the dragon parade is to scare away all the evil spirits to insure good luck for the New Year. This dragon can hold about 15 kids under it. It is great for class parties or your Lunar New Year adoption group party. We had one kid lead the dragon banging a gong. (or a trash can lid and wooden spoon would do) The other kids not under the dragon at school beat rhythm sticks and tambourines while they marched around the whole school during recess. At our adoption group the kids all had very loud party horns and beat metal buckets as drums, while they marched around our back yard. It was quiet a sight. This is a loud event, so just invite the neighbors!

Vietnamese Dragon Parade Directions

The head is made of two boxes. One large box and one shoe box for the mouth. The large box is cover in red wrapping paper, then a colorful wrapping paper was added for accent. The shoe box for the mouth was covered in gold wrapping paper.

The eyes, ears, and nose are made from yellow plastic cups. The mustache, beard and eye brows are made from fuzzy stuffing glued to typing paper. The horns are paper towel tubes. The spikes on top are cut out of card board with cut tabs to attach to the top.

The long dragon tail was very easy! Two cheap thin red plastic table clothes taped first along the seams end to end. Then stapled together for extra strength.  Later I added a yellow stripe down the tail.

The stripe is two yellow plastic table cloths folded into fourth and taped onto the red. The two yellow table clothes were attached end to end. The excess yellow was bunched to add a more definite tail. The tail is attached to the head with tape and staples. Have fun!