Simple Paper Lanterns to Celebrate – Chinese New Year Craft

Chinese New Year Craft for Kids

Chinese New Year is coming up and as part of my aim to educate my children about the world and the different cultures around the world we’re creating from Chinese New Year Craft so we can talk about what goes on whilst we craft. Here’s is a simple Chinese New Year Craft of making Paper Lanterns.

What you need to make simple Paper Lanterns

Thin Card or Paper in Chinese themed colours
Black Pens
Sticky Tape
Scissors

Check out some more crafts for the Chinese New Year with our Year of the Tiger Crafts for Kids.

How you make simple Paper Lanterns

This is such a classic craft I remember creating them when I was a child with my parents and they are a lot of fun to do. We started with a blank sheet of paper that using our research (we had looked at Chinese Lanterns and Chinese New Year celebrations on the Internet) to find out what sort of images were used and decided that Dragons were a good start for our pictures which T and J set about drawing in black pen on the red paper.

When they had finished drawing I took the paper and in landscape I cut off a small strip at one end to form the handle. I then folded the paper in half and cut slits in at fairly regular intervals to around an inch from the edge.

Once I had cut J, T and I set about making them into lanterns. We unfolded and then joined the two short edges together using sticky tape to keep them in place. With the strip that I had cut off we then formed a handle for our Paper Lantern.

This is such a simple but fun Chinese New Year Craft for Toddler and Preschoolers to do to learn about Chinese New Year. Check out this variation on the Chinese Paper Lanterns from Red Ted Art.

Come back later in the month for more Chinese New Year Crafts

Author

Cerys Parker

Cerys is a marine biologist, environmental educator, teacher, mum, and home educator from the UK. She loves getting creative, whether it is with simple and easy crafts and ideas, activities to make learning fun, or delicious recipes that you and your kids can cook together you'll find them all shared here on Rainy Day Mum.