Paper Plate Lion

Paper plates make an excellent base for creating many crafts and faces whether animal or human are easy to create. Combining fine motor skills and extending cutting practice this simple Paper Plate Lion is a step on from our first Paper Plate Lion which is suited for toddlers this is perfect for preschoolers and kindergarten aged children.

Lion craft

Materials needed to make a Paper Plate Lion

Paper Plate
Papers in yellows and orange
Glue
Scissors
Pencil
Googley Eyes
Pen

Does your toddler like Disney – then why not make some Disney Paper Plate Crafts together

How to Make a Paper Plate Lion

Take some yellow and orange and paper and split into half. To cover a paper plate I found that we didn’t need 2 full sheets of coloured paper instead we could mix two colours together and use half a sheet each. Once it was split T and I set to work first of all cutting some part out of the paper helping her with scissor use.

T gets bored easily just working with scissors so we swapped to tearing the paper – this is something that she enjoys and we worked on tearing the paper into squares and rectangles (although as you can see they weren’t very accurate).

Once torn she spread the glue all over the paper plate – we’ve recently started to use a clear glue in a squeezable bottle instead of white glue it seems to be easier for her to control and provides a stronger bond but white PVA glue or even a glue stick would work as well – and then glue on all of the cut and torn pieces then leave to dry.

To create the mane I decided to use hands – you could do this with painted hand prints but we were having a relatively mess free day (white t-shirt day!) so decided to work on some pencil control and drew around our hands on paper. I started out demonstrating how to draw around the hand with some of T’s and then she tried drawing around mine and then tried her own as well.

T and I cut out the hands at almost 3 it was more T cutting into a piece of paper trying to cut around the lines made and me cutting out the hands but with an older or a child more confident with scissor control they can do this themselves.

Once all the hands were cut out we glued them in place around the head as a mane. Added 2 googley eyes and using a black marker added a nose and mouth to the lion.

If you have younger children check out our Toddler Paper Plate Lion as an alternative method.