January 16 is National Appreciate a Dragon Day. Wahoo!

Everybody, absolutely EVERYBODY, needs to celebrate this holiday. Right?

Especially grandmothers and grandkids. Most definitely! (Bless the little pea pickin’ heart of the person who established this day because it provides a reason to make dragons.)

These dragons are inexpensive (read that to mean cheap cheap, cheap) and simple to make. You just need a few supplies and a few minutes and you’ll soon have a whole flock of these lovely little fellas.

Here’s what you’ll need:

• toilet paper tube
• colored construction paper
• crepe paper
• pom poms
• googly eyes
• scissors
• glue

First, you’ll need to decide what color of paper you want to cover your empty toilet paper tube with. Spencer’s first dragon was green. (His second and third ones were red.)

(My granddaughter made a pink one, a purple one, and a red one. Who said that dragons had to be green, eh?)

Cut and glue a piece of construction paper around your tube. We used a hot glue gun but you can use a glue stick if you’d prefer. (Save you from getting blisters from the hot glue. Just saying.)

Then, decide what color of pom poms that you want to use for the eyes. (These are hard decisions to make, folks!) Put two dabs of glue at one edge of the tube and press the pom poms into the glue.

(Spencer was enamored with our little calculator. He needed it nearby as he made his dragons. That’s why you see it in the picture below.)

Put two dabs of glue on the pom poms. Press the googly eyes onto the glue. (Spencer wanted to make eyebrows so he drew them on the pom poms with a black marking pen.)

Glue two small pom poms on the other end of the tube where you want the nostrils to be.

Cut a strip of crepe paper for the dragon’s tongue. Or for the flames coming out of the dragon’s mouth. Glue it inside the dragon’s mouth. (The mouth is the tube end with the nostril pom poms.) You could have more than one strip of crepe paper if you want. (And of course, grandkids will want more. Probably.)

And that’s it! Your dragon is finished.

Here’s a picture of Spencer’s red dragon. (I forgot to take a picture of the green one that he made. I think I was too distracted by the second degree burn on my finger . . . )

You will notice that he decided to have two pieces of crepe paper — one for his tongue and one for the fire.

Kaylissa decided that she needed to draw eyebrows on her dragon behind the pom poms. And put the nostrils in the middle of the tube. And draw a mouth. (I guess her’s has two mouths — one that she drew and one where the flames come out . . . )

Here, the dragons pose for their picture to be taken. Cute little buggers, aren’t they?

I thought that the kids would blow through the tubes to make it like the dragon was sticking out his tongue or breathing flames of fire. But I learned something. If you glue the crepe paper to the bottom of the dragon’s ‘mouth,’ you can blow all you want but your breath won’t be able to lift up the crepe paper. You need to glue the crepe paper to the top of the dragon’s mouth. (Duh . . . )

Also, there is no way on earth that you can blow through a long tube and blow the crepe paper so it’s like the dragon is sticking his tongue out. Just. Not. Enough. Breath. (Gasp, hack, gasp . . .  pass out from hyperventilating . . . ) Oh well.

If I were really organized, I would have been prepared to strum my guitar and sing Puff the Magic Dragon with the grandkids. Alas, I wasn’t that organized. Sigh.

I tried to get them to watch Pete’s Dragon but they weren’t interested. Rats.

Have a great time celebrating National Appreciate a Dragon Day. Hopefully, your grandkids will develop a deep appreciation for dragons.