Handmade spinning tops with everyday materials! Easy ideas you can enjoy for New Year’s too
As New Year’s approaches, you may find yourself wondering what kinds of games to enjoy with the kids.
Here, we introduce ideas for handmade spinning tops that you can easily make using familiar materials found at home.
Using items like bouncy balls, paper plates, plastic bottle caps, and origami paper, you can make them right away without any special preparation.
They’re designed to be easy for small children to spin, and you can have fun decorating them in bright colors, so the excitement lasts from the making process through playtime.
This New Year, why not have both kids and adults try making spinning tops together?
- Collection of handmade spinning top ideas: how to make tops for use in childcare and play
- Handmade ideas to create and play the traditional Japanese game “Daruma Otoshi”!
- Let's make a handmade hagoita! Fun ideas using milk cartons and cardboard
- Let's make New Year’s decorations by hand! A collection of ideas you can create with everyday materials.
- Handmade Lottery Draws Kids Will Love! A Fun Collection of Ideas to Make and Play
- Let's Make and Play! A Collection of Homemade Kendama Ideas
- [Handmade] A collection of bamboo-copter ideas using various materials
- Handmade omikuji ideas: DIY crafts you can make and play with
- Moving! Spinning! Flying! Fun handmade toys made with rubber bands
- [Easy] Let’s make a snake with origami! A toy you can play with and a zodiac decoration
- Let's make a DIY Fukuwarai! Simple ideas for fun with kids
- Fun for kids and adults alike! A collection of DIY beanbag (otedama) ideas
- [Childcare] Easy! Make a DIY target game. Playful craft and fun game
Handmade tops with everyday materials! Simple ideas you can enjoy for New Year’s (11–20)
Fun to spin! Cardboard top
What do you like about spinning tops? One thing I find charming about them is how their impression changes when they’re still versus when they’re spinning.
When a top painted red and blue starts to spin, it even looks slightly purple—doesn’t that seem lovely? So, how about making a cardboard top and giving it a beautiful paint job for fun? You can simply cut the cardboard into a circle to make a top, but there’s also a special appeal to making one by cutting the cardboard into long, slender strips, tidying them up, and layering them in concentric circles.
Decorate it with colored paper or chiyogami so vibrantly that you can’t even see the original cardboard!
A spinning top made from the bottom of a milk carton
There used to be a word, “milk bottle,” and for a long time milk normally came in bottles.
Back in the day, the milk served with school lunches was in small bottles, too.
Maybe people shied away from them because bottles are heavy and dangerous when they break? It feels like milk cartons took their place in no time.
But those milk cartons are paper and yet surprisingly sturdy, aren’t they? So how about making a spinning top using a milk carton? Just cut out circles or squares with scissors and stick a toothpick through—it’s almost done.
You can even use a plastic bottle cap as a handle.
And don’t forget to add your own special decorations!
wind top
A wind-top that spins when you blow on it.
It might seem like a special kind of spinning top that doesn’t use a string or your hands, but you can actually make it easily with just a single sheet of paper! It’s easiest if you use small origami paper.
First, crease the paper so you can find the center, then cut from the corners to make a cross shape.
Next, fold the protruding parts to create the blades—and you’re done! As long as it’s slightly bowl-shaped along the central crease, it’s fine.
Once it’s finished, blow gently from above.
It will spin round and round around the central crease as its axis!
a spinning top under a transparent plastic sheet
https://www.tiktok.com/@n.annlee321/video/7097922114820295938How about making a cute, translucent spinning top that’s fun to craft and fun to play with? First, draw a circle on a clear plastic sheet and cut it out.
After cutting it out, stick some cute stickers on top.
Make a hole in the center with an awl and insert a toothpick—then it’s done.
Since it’s transparent, it looks adorable when it spins, and it’s cute just sitting in your room, too.
If you cut the circle slightly inside the cutting line, you’ll get a neat finish.
Be sure to make one and give it a spin for the New Year!
flyer frame
Here’s an idea for making a spinning top using flyers that come with newspapers or are posted in your mailbox.
It saves you the trouble of throwing them away, and best of all, you can repurpose something you thought was trash—how sustainable! The only materials you need are flyers and tape.
For the core, roll a flyer tightly into a thin rod, then cut off the top and bottom and use the firm middle section.
Wrap a slightly thicker flyer around this to form the base, and then keep wrapping flyers around the base.
The key is to secure it with tape as you go so it doesn’t shift or wobble.
paper cup spinning top
This is a paper-cup spinning top that’s easy to spin even for children with small hands.
Cut the side of a paper cup into six equal sections and spread them open, then decorate with stickers, pens, or origami paper.
Flip the top over, attach a plastic bottle cap to the center, then turn it back—your spinning top is complete, with petals that fan out like a flower! Because children can grasp the wide central area to spin it, even those who find pinching or gripping difficult can enjoy playing.
The steps are simple, so be sure to try making it together with your child.
Handmade spinning tops with everyday materials! Easy ideas you can enjoy for New Year (21–30)
Origami spinning tops you can play with during the New Year!
@niconico_mama How did you spend New Year’s? 🥰Origami#origami
♪ Isn't it enough to be just cute? – First Chorus – CUTIE STREET
Here’s an origami spinning top idea you can make once you know the “zabuton fold.” You’ll use two sheets of origami paper, so prepare your favorite colors.
First, let’s fold the first sheet.
Do a zabuton fold by bringing all four corners to the center, then repeat that same fold two more times.
For the second sheet, also do the zabuton fold three times, but flip the paper over after each fold.
After the third zabuton fold, flip the paper over and open out the corners that are gathered at the center to the outside.
This will be the body of the spinning top; the first sheet will be the handle.
For the handle, squash the areas between the corners so the center stands up, then insert it inside the body of the spinning top, aligning the corners as you go.
Now your top is complete—use the handle to spin it and have fun!
