To help us celebrate Lunar New Year, Chinese New Year, we made some fun paper lanterns. But before I show you how to make this craft, here’s a brief history of why lanterns were part of the celebration. There are many different versions and here is one from my friend Eva:
| On the last day of the Chinese New Year celebration, paper lanterns were used. There were no street lights or electricity, and thus, lanterns were used as the only light source. Likewise, back in the days, all the young women were not allowed to go outside in the evenings to socialize except for this last day. Lots of love stories came from this holiday. Young girls using their lanterns gathered at the night market in hopes of meeting their prince charming. Since then, lanterns were a part of the Chinese New Year celebration. |
Materials:
Colored construction paper
Scissors
Glue or tape
Pipe cleaners or chenille stem
hole puncher
Streamers
Instructions:
Fold the construction paper in half the long way or the “hot dog way” and starting at the fold line, make a series of cuts about ½ inch to 3/4 inch apart. Be sure to stop at about 1/2 inch from the edge. In other words, you don’t want individual strips.
When the cutting is done, open up your paper and now put your lantern together by gluing or taping the ends of your paper together the short way or the “hamburger way”
Here’s a lantern with the ends taped together.
Now you can spice up your lanterns with colorful streamers and a handle. I punched two holes on the top of the lantern and added a pipe cleaner for the handle. I hope you and your kids will enjoy this simple craft!
To get a brief history of Chinese New Year, click Chinese New Year 2013: Year of the Snake.
Hi, I'm Betty and welcome to Home Educator Mom. Whether you are a homeschooling family or not, we’re all called to be our kids’ first teachers. Our desire here is to encourage moms as we walk this path of training and equipping our children. We hope you will stay a while and join us on this journey: learning and sharing life together. Meet our 
I’m here from the Graceful blog link up. While we didn’t homeschool, I always appreciated resources like this.
Great work you’re doing.
Peace and good.
Hi Chelle,
Thank you for stopping by and taking time to say hello. Visit again!
We will be making these lanterns in our After School Program on Monday to go along with the Year of the Snake activities for the week. Thank you!
Great, I’m glad you can use this craft with your students. Have fun with it Nancy!