Chinese Lanterns

Do you remember making these as a child?  I do...and while we were passing the time indoors on a snowy Saturday after the kids were tired of snowman building, I showed them how to make these.  

This year, I'm trying to mark each celebration in the calendar...Burns Night, Chinese New Year, Pancake Day, Valentines Day, etc. with a little craft so I began thinking about these a few weeks ago.

They are so easy to make, the kids love it.  All you need is:

Red paper (or any colour will do, but they are traditionally red)
Scissors
Sticky tape

Fold your paper in half length ways, and cut slits all the way along the fold (staying around an inch away from the top).

Open the paper out and tape each end together to make the lantern.  

You could add a little paper strip for a handle to hang these (as I seem to recall doing as a kid) or put a LED tea light inside, like we did - the lanterns are now sitting on their beside tables and I was finally able to throw away the gingerbread houses from Christmas!

If you want to get even further into Chinese New Year, Red Ted Art has a great round-up of crafts, and Twinkl has some printables that I will be using to decorate the house when we cook our Chinese dinner on 10 February!