[For Seniors] Make an April Calendar: Fun Ideas to Brighten Your Mood
Creating an April calendar is a lovely recreation that lets older adults feel the changing seasons right at their fingertips.
Works themed around the breath of spring—cherry blossoms, tulips, strawberries—gently soften the heart each time you look at them.
From origami and tissue flowers to watercolor and clay craft, the materials and techniques are diverse.
The time spent moving your hands while chatting with those around you—saying things like, “This color feels so springlike”—naturally fosters smiles and conversation.
Here, we present ideas for making calendars packed with the vibrant colors of spring.
May the process of creating a calendar—which also serves as finger exercise and brain training—offer a moment to feel the arrival of spring.
- [For seniors] Enjoy spring: April craft ideas
- [For Seniors] May Calendar Craft: Fun and Easy
- [For Seniors] Making a March Calendar: Introducing Spring-Themed Motifs and Arrangements
- [For Seniors] Feel the Arrival of Spring: A Collection of Cherry Blossom Craft Ideas
- [For Seniors] Recommended for day-service centers. A collection of craft ideas for April
- [For Seniors] Make Every Day Fun! A Collection of Handmade Tear-off Calendars
- For Seniors: Feel the Arrival of Warm Spring. Cherry Blossom Wall Decoration Ideas
- [For Seniors] Enjoy the Arrival of Spring Indoors! Recommended April Origami
- [For Seniors] Make an April Calendar: Fun Ideas to Brighten Your Mood
- [For Seniors] March Origami: Ideas to Brighten Your Room with Seasonal Flowers and Events
- [For seniors] A handmade calendar you’ll want to make in February
- For Seniors: Come, Spring! Recommended March Craft Ideas for Daycare Services
- For Seniors: Easy June Calendar Craft Ideas
For seniors: Making an April calendar. Fun ideas that brighten the mood (1–10)
Watercolor painting: Dandelions and horsetailsNEW!
Horsetails and dandelions, which peek out with a warm presence, bring little touches of spring each time you find them.
They’re also great motifs for calendar designs, so why not take this opportunity to give them a try? The transparency and softness of watercolor will help you create a piece that even conveys the feel of spring air.
For the horsetail, first paint the silhouette in a light color, then add the joints and patterns with a darker shade.
For the dandelion, paint countless petals from the outside toward the inside, then finish in the order of stem and leaves.
When painting the leaves, move your brush with a triangular image in mind to express their distinctive shape.
Watercolor painting: Plum Blossoms and WarblerNEW!
Watercolor painting may seem difficult for beginners…
but if you can paint just as you envision, it will surely turn into a lovely piece.
This time, it’s perfect for a spring calendar design! We’ll show you how to paint the symbols of spring: plum blossoms and a Japanese bush warbler.
First, paint the line of the warbler’s back.
Next, add the tail feathers, and use fine lines to express the roundness of the belly.
Then, while checking the balance, paint plum blossoms around the warbler and add the branches afterward.
Don’t worry—if the flowers feel sparse, you can always add more later.
Finish by painting the yellow stamens of the plum blossoms.
Take your time and paint slowly, one stroke at a time.
Hanami Three-Color Dango CalendarNEW!
Spring is the season for cherry-blossom viewing—and no hanami is complete without hanami dango.
In this piece, rolled-up tissue paper is wrapped with pink, white, and green crepe paper to represent the dumplings.
Colorful cherry blossoms are scattered around, creating a very festive finish.
You can simply arrange the dumplings on a backing sheet, or make skewers out of construction paper to turn them into skewered dango.
Pink is the basic recommended color for the blossoms, but if you prepare various colors and let the maker choose, it will add individuality to the work.
[For seniors] Making April calendars: fun ideas (11–20) that will brighten your mood
butterflyNEW!
Would you like to make a butterfly with striking two-toned wings? You can craft it from a single sheet of origami paper, and it’s a piece that can be incorporated into a three-dimensional calendar design.
Place the origami with the colored side facing up, and fold the left and right edges to meet at the center.
Next, fold the top and bottom edges together to form a square.
Then squash the pockets along the left and right creases into triangles.
Flatten both so that triangles appear on both the front and back.
From here, use the rectangular section beneath the triangles to create the wings.
There are no complex steps—once you form the general shape of the wings, you just refine the form—so even those who don’t usually do origami should give it a try.
TulipNEW!
Tulips are a famous flower that even appear in spring nursery rhymes.
They’re cute and showy, and because they make everyone think of spring, they’re a perfect motif for April calendar designs.
Here, we’ll introduce tulips made with origami, so let’s finish your design by attaching your folded piece to the calendar.
First, fold the origami paper into a triangle, crease it, and open it.
Next, fold the top corner down to meet the crease, then fold the bottom corner up so it sticks out slightly above.
Then fold the left and right corners straight up so their height matches the protruding top corner.
Finally, fold the left, right, and bottom corners to round the shape, and you’re done.
There are also instructions for making the stem and leaves, so be sure to fold those as well.
Cherry Blossom CalendarNEW!
@hirose_ds TranslationElderlyCaregivingRecreationTranslationSpring#CherryBlossomCalendarFinger exercisesPapercraft
♬ A Tiny Courage – FUNKY MONKEY BABYS
Nighttime cherry blossoms seen from a window—or perhaps a raft of petals drifting across the water.
This idea lets you express various spring atmospheres by changing how you place the cherry blossoms on the base.
The method is very simple: just attach a sheet of construction paper cut into a circle and some cherry blossom petals to the upper part of the base, and an illustrated calendar to the lower part.
You can fill the inside of the circle completely with blossoms, or let them intentionally spill beyond it.
Because the idea is simple, the finished design will vary greatly depending on the creator’s sensibility.
Watercolor painting: Ojizo-sama and horsetailsNEW!
This piece soothes the heart with the smiling face of a Jizo, painted in watercolor.
Butterflies flutter around the Jizo, and horsetails are sprouting at his feet.
Watercolor can feel intimidating, but the Jizo is done as an illustration, and the main brushwork is for the butterflies and horsetails.
These are easy motifs even for beginners, so why not try incorporating them into a calendar design? With watercolor, it helps to proceed with the idea of laying down the color loaded on your brush.
Be mindful of the brush angle and which part of the tip you’re using as you give it a try.