Cat and Rabbit Lantern Crafts

Today I wanted to share these fun paper lanterns I recently made with my kids to help decorate for the upcoming Lunar New Year that will begin on Sunday, January 22. The Vietnamese zodiac usually coincides with the Chinese zodiac however this year marks the beginning of the year of the cat for Vietnamese families and the year of the rabbit for Chinese, Indonesian, Malaysian, Korean, and Singaporean families. For Korean families, it’s actually the year of the black rabbit. As I want to teach my kids about inclusion, we created both cat and rabbit lanterns. All you need is some construction paper or colored cardstock, the free printable templates below, scissors, and glue. Hope it can help to add a little fun to your family or classroom celebration as well!

These cat lanterns also feature hoa mai, yellow apricot flowers that bloom around the new year in Vietnam.

Here is a picture of the template that is free to download below. Kids can color in their cats and flowers using crayons, markers, or oil pastels and choose different colored paper for their cat bodies.

You could also print the templates out onto mixed media paper for your kids to paint or use as a template to cut out pieces onto construction paper. We used the smaller oval that is included in the rabbit lantern template to make cut outs onto pink construction paper for the inside of our rabbit ears.

Here is a picture of the included rabbit lantern template. The files for both crafts are free to download below.

Cat and Rabbit Lantern Craft Templates Download

Paper Lantern Cut Template

I found it best to have the kids cut and paste all the pieces of their cat and rabbit faces before moving on to create their lantern bodies. This is what all the pieces look like when they are all cut out.

This is what the pieces look like all ready to put together.

When making these lanterns, simply print out the paper lantern cut template above, fold in half, and use as a template to cut onto either construction paper or colored cardstock (also folded in half). We used 12X12 pieces of red cardstock to create our lanterns. We use a lot of red in decorating for the new year as it is considered to be the color of luck and according to old superstition, is also believed to help ward off evil spirits. This is a great activity to work on scissor practice for preschoolers. My older kids still enjoy this activity and look forward to making lanterns every year. If you choose to use larger cardstock, you will need to make two or three extra cuts and make sure your kids are cutting along the folded edge.

The lantern bodies need to be stapled together at the top and bottom, then hole punched on two sides at the top. You can use pipe cleaner or another strip of paper as the lantern top. Then simply hang them using fishing wire, ribbon, or yarn. If you chose cardstock to make your lanterns, they can also be placed over small led tealights on tabletops as decorations.