[For seniors] Enjoy spring: April craft ideas
As spring arrives and the weather warms, colorful flowers bloom and we feel lighthearted.
We’d love for older adults—who often find it difficult to go out—to enjoy the cheerful spring atmosphere too.
In this article, we introduce craft ideas recommended for April.
We’ve prepared projects ranging from simple steps like folding origami and tearing paper to slightly more complex tasks like cutting predetermined shapes with scissors.
Please adjust the difficulty level to suit the older adults who will be doing the crafts.
Using the fingertips helps stimulate the brain, and completing a project can bring a sense of accomplishment and fulfillment.
Let’s bring a touch of spring into craft recreation activities.
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- [For Seniors] Making a March Calendar: Introducing Spring-Themed Motifs and Arrangements
- [For Seniors] Enjoy the Arrival of Spring Indoors! Recommended April Origami
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- [For Seniors] March Origami: Ideas to Brighten Your Room with Seasonal Flowers and Events
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[For Seniors] Enjoy Spring. April Craft Ideas (171–180)
Tricolor Dango Squishy
They look just like real tri-colored dango… but these are delightfully tactile squishies.
How about enjoying this tri-colored dango squishy as a spring craft? Cut a sponge into round shapes and refine them carefully with scissors.
If that’s difficult, it’s a good idea to prepare pre-made round sponges.
Paint the sponge in three colors with acrylic paint, thread them onto a bamboo skewer, apply wood glue, and let it dry—that’s it! When you squeeze it, it has a soft, squishy feel and then slowly returns to its original shape.
Besides tri-colored dango, with a bit of creativity you can make all kinds of other designs too.
Origami 3D Strawberry
When it comes to fruits that symbolize spring, strawberries are the first that come to mind.
They’re popular with both children and adults, and many people probably feel that spring has arrived when they see strawberries.
Let’s try making strawberries with origami! Origami is easy to do, so many places actively incorporate it into craft recreation activities, don’t they? This strawberry becomes a three-dimensional piece; you make the berry and the calyx separately and then attach them together.
It would be adorable to make lots of them and display a bunch of strawberries on the wall!
How to fold spring flowers
How about making a cute wisteria decoration with plump, three-dimensional blossoms using purple origami? It may look complicated at first glance, but the folding is simple and follows the same steps as a crane up to a point.
Combine the center sections, then fold the petal parts outward to finish one blossom.
If you neatly tuck the folded triangular part firmly inward, you’ll get wisteria flowers that look almost real.
Make about ten of these, then use green origami to create the stem and leaves.
Bring a touch of spring to your room with realistic, beautiful wisteria.
Cherry Blossoms and a Bridge
When you think of scenery where cherry blossoms stand out, many scenes come to mind, but the combination of a bridge and cherry blossoms especially evokes a traditional Japanese atmosphere.
This decoration recreates that quintessentially Japanese image by arranging paper pieces like elements in a painting to depict a bridge with cherry blossoms.
The key is the shape of the cherry blossom petals: by making a small slit in each petal and overlapping the cut edges, you create a three-dimensional effect.
After that, simply arrange the petal and leaf pieces on the backing paper and attach the bridge piece in one corner to finish.
It’s also fun to play with color gradients and to pay attention to the shape of the bridge.
Furoshiki Making
How about making a spring-like furoshiki with a cherry blossom pattern? Furoshiki are traditional Japanese items, but lately they’ve been revisited from an SDGs perspective and are catching on with younger generations, too.
Above all, they’re compact to carry and incredibly useful when you need them—having one is never a loss! For this spring-themed furoshiki, we’ll stamp cherry blossom motifs using a stencil-like method.
Lightly dab the stamp over the template with a gentle tapping motion.
You might even find yourself wanting to make furoshiki with all kinds of patterns to match the seasons!
[For Seniors] Enjoying Spring: Craft Ideas for April (181–190)
Wisteria Flowers Made from Triangles
This is a wisteria decoration made by combining origami folded into triangles.
The folding method is very simple: first, divide a sheet of origami into four triangular pieces.
Apply glue to the left and right edges, then fold them toward the center.
Glue two of these pieces together to make one large flower.
Next, make the small flowers.
This time, cut the origami into four squares, then fold each square in half into a triangle.
Fold them the same way as the large flower, preparing some that are glued together in pairs and some left as a single piece.
Attach them in order onto a paper tape, and the beauty of the arrangement will create a lovely wisteria trellis!
Translucent Garland
A translucent garland that creates a light, springlike atmosphere.
Cut translucent origami lengthwise into strips one-eighth the width.
Glue each piece together alternately top and bottom in sequence, offsetting them diagonally as you go to create a soft, petal-like design.
Make a second set of the same pieces and attach it to the first to give the garland a three-dimensional look.
Punch holes and thread clips through to finish it as a hanging decoration.
Because it uses translucent origami, the soft colors shine beautifully when light passes through.
In conclusion
We introduced some recommended craft ideas for April.
Many of them are bright and cheerful, aren’t they? It would be nice to enjoy tea time or cherry-blossom viewing with the flowers everyone made! Even if you’d like to go out but can’t quite make it, try enjoying items that bring the feeling of spring into your room.