How to Make Chinese Lanterns

Crafts are a great way to spend some of your time. It doesn't matter what age you are, you can enjoy some type of craft. They are a fun way to keep learning and spend some extra time. A great craft project for your children is Chinese Lanterns. You can easily help them make these for decorations. These can be used as decorations for bedrooms or even for a fun birthday party.

You will need to gather construction paper or any other kind of craft paper; this can be plain or a variety of colors. You will also need scissors, tape, and paints, crayons, or colored pencils. You may also want stickers.

First you will need to fold the piece of paper in half lengthwise. You will then need to make cuts on the folded side. You can make these as small or as large as you want as long as you can make plenty of cuts. You will want to cut them as evenly as possible. Do not cut completely through to the open ends. For an example of the cuts check out the pattern I included. As you can see you don't cut all the way to the edge opposite of the folded one. After you have made all of the cuts, you will need to unfold the sheet.

Next you can actually decorate the lantern before it is put together. You can let the children paint the sheet or decorate it however they want. If they do paint the sheet you will want to let it dry before you assemble the lantern. After they are through decorating you can assemble the lanterns. All you need to do is tape the long sides of the pages together. This will create the lantern. You can then tape a little strip of paper to the top to create a handle that you hang the lanterns up with.

This is a very easy craft project that you can do with your children. It requires only a few items and they can easily decorate this craft project. They will like this because it is not overly complicated. They can decorate them with whatever they want. This is a great project that will draw out your children's creativity. Just have fun with it and you and your kids will love this project. You can actually use items that you have in your home for this project. These work great for decorations for children's rooms or even for a party.