These Chinese inspired paper lanterns are a lot of fun to create and make great decorations, too! Caitie recently went on a trip to China and saw lots of Chinese lanterns. Lanterns are an important part of Chinese culture – they were first used to light the streets of China, and today are a symbol of a bright future. Red lanterns can be seen all over China, still hanging from street lights to celebrate Chinese culture. Red lanterns are given as gifts during the Chinese Lantern Festival as a sign of good luck and best wishes. You can make these Chinese inspired lanterns at home, and maybe even make one to give to someone for good luck!
Things you’ll need
- colored construction paper
- paper tube rolls
- craft paint
- scissors
- clear tape
- disposable paper plate or something to put the paint on
Steps
Choose any color you like for your lantern, red means good luck. To decorate the paper, bend the paper tubes into different shapes. We used a star, a square, a heart and left one round. These make wonderful stamps to decorate the paper.
Squeeze some paint onto a disposable plate and dip the end of the paper tube into the paint, then stamp it onto your paper. You can try creating different patterns with all of the shapes! Once finished, leave the sheets to dry.
Fold your patterned paper in half. With the folded side at the bottom, cut off a one inch strip from the top of the lantern!
With a pencil, lightly draw a line one inch down from the top of the paper. Then with scissors, cut parallel strips up to the line.
Open and unfold the paper. Roll the top and bottom of the paper into a tube and tape the ends together. Then tape the strip that was set aside early onto the lantern to make the handle.
Now you can hang up your lanterns as a decoration, or give them away as a symbol of good luck and prosperity!
To learn more about Chinese culture and to hear about Caitie’s trip to China, watch our Caitie’s Classroom episode Great Big World!
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Contributor
This post accompanies a video from Caitie’s Classroom. Join Caitie in the classroom for kids songs, games, activities, stories, crafts, and much more! Catch up on past episodes and segments, follow Caitie on Facebook and Instagram, and subscribe to Super Simple Play so you never miss an episode. Don’t forget to ring the bell for notifications!
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