Tiger Lantern Craft

Today I wanted to share a simple paper craft I recently made with my kids to help decorate for the upcoming Lunar New Year as this coming Tuesday, we will be welcoming the Year of the Tiger. All you need is some construction paper (in orange and black), 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 files are best printed out onto regular paper and used as a template to cut out onto colored construction paper. If you don’t have construction paper, regular white printer paper will work just fine. Your kids can color their tigers using crayons, markers, or oil pastels or print out the colored version. You could also print out the black and white version onto mixed media paper for your kids to paint.

I found it best to have the kids cut and paste all the pieces of their tiger faces and tails 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 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 orange construction paper. We also used 12X12 pieces of orange cardstock to create some larger lanterns. 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.

We hole punched our lanterns on top and added gold pipe cleaners then strung them to our ceiling with some clear fishing wire but you can use gold ribbon or whatever you have. In place of gold pipe cleaners you can use a cut strip of paper or ribbon.

My kids really enjoyed making their tiger lanterns and were so proud to see them all displayed.

We also made these Vietnamese paper dolls from the template I created last year. It is free to download here.

You may also enjoy:

More Lunar New Year Crafts (includes free Happy New Year in Vietnamese banner and paper Hoa Mai cut outs to decorate more lanterns)

Skip Counting Tiger Math Craft

Lunar New Year Counting Clip Cards

The Best Egg Rolls Ever Recipe

I create more printable activities for kids here with the goal of helping to grow kids who love to learn.

If you get a chance to make these tiger lanterns or Vietnamese paper dolls, I would love to see it! Please use #sodangfun on social media, tag me @sodangfun on Instagram, or post to my Facebook page.

Wishing you and your family a healthy and happy Year of the Tiger!