Winter Lanterns
Light up the night sky or your bedroom by making your own festive winter lantern.
Learning Goals
- Be Curious
- Come Up with Ideas and Try Them Out
- Take Risks and Persist Through Challenges
Materials Required
- Paper
- Decorative tools and materials: markers, color pencils, paint, stickers, gel pens, etc.
- Adhesives (tape, glue, stapler)
- Tealight (optional)
Instructions
- Introduce your child to paper lanterns by finding different examples online or in a book. Share with them that paper lanterns come in all different shapes, sizes, and colors.
- Prompt your child to think about what kind of design or pattern they would like to make for their winter lantern.
- Once they have an idea of how they want their lantern to look, use decorative tools and materials to create the design of the lantern.
- Use scissors and explore different ways to fold the paper in order to form the exterior of your lantern.
- To create a handle, cut off a small strip from another piece of paper or cut a strip off from your lantern before you start designing it.
- Test out your lantern with a tea light or another portable light source.
Tips for Adults
- Make observations and narrate what you notice children are doing or pay special attention and ask open-ended questions like:
- “What made you come up with your lantern design?”
- “How will you decide to form your lantern?”
- “What are some ways we can change the paper to allow more light to pass through it?”