[Nursery/Kindergarten] New Year Craft Ideas: A Collection of Projects You Can Enjoy Even After Making Them
You want to plan New Year’s crafts at a nursery or kindergarten, but you can’t think of ideas that kids will enjoy while incorporating traditional elements… In times like these, decorations and classic toys made from familiar materials are perfect! Here, we introduce New Year-themed craft ideas ranging from lucky charms like akabeko (red cow), kagami mochi, and shimenawa, to playable crafts such as fukuwarai, kendama, and spinning tops.
They all make use of recycled materials like milk cartons, plastic bottles, and paper cups, so why not enjoy preparing for the New Year together with the children? Since the children’s creations are treated as “artworks,” we use the term “seisaku” (制作) in the text.
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[Nursery/Kindergarten] New Year Arts and Crafts Ideas! A Collection of Projects You Can Enjoy Even After Making Them (71–80)
Winter craft! Rolling snowman
Snowmen made from toilet paper rolls are round and adorable.
Cut a toilet paper roll in half, then glue colored origami paper on top.
Glue the two prepared roll pieces together to form a snowman shape.
Attach a triangle hat made from construction paper, draw the face with colored pens, and your snowman is complete.
Since cutting the round toilet paper rolls can be difficult for children, it’s a good idea to prepare pre-cut pieces in advance.
Song for drawing the Horse
Perfect for when you want to draw a horse but don’t know how! Here’s an idea for drawing the zodiac Horse using a drawing song.
First, use ovals to represent the head and body, then imagine raindrops as you draw the neck and legs.
Use the “horns” part of the lyrics for the ears, and the “grass” part for the mane and hooves.
Finally, add the eyes, nose, and tail, and you’re done! By drawing along with the song, kids can easily draw a horse.
Start with a pencil sketch so you can erase, then trace over it with a pen to finish.
Great for walls too! Recommended origami for January
Let’s make New Year–themed items using washi-patterned origami and chiyogami.
The video features hagoita paddles, spinning tops (koma), kagami mochi, daruma dolls, and shuttlecocks (hane).
The ideas are full of exciting touches for kids—like customizing the daruma’s face to match the zodiac animal or freely choosing origami colors for the shuttlecocks.
When decorating indoors, you can get creative by mounting them on construction paper or stringing them together like a garland!
Perfect for wall displays! Cute Shishimai (lion dance)
The shishimai (lion dance) has long been cherished as a New Year’s good-luck charm that brings fortune.
The method is simple: cut vertically down the center of a toilet paper tube with scissors, roll it, secure it with a rubber band, and stamp on the shishimai patterns.
Then attach the lion’s eyes, nose, mouth, mane, and ears.
Adjusting the amount of glue while sticking the parts helps children learn how to use glue properly.
Glue the body, face, and legs of the shishimai onto a backing sheet, then finish by pasting torn pieces of origami paper around it.
Using finger stamps or crayons to draw New Year–themed pictures is also recommended to give it a seasonal feel.
You can make it with origami! Kagami mochi origami
Kagami mochi is characterized by stacked rice cakes and a bitter orange on top.
It looks lovely whether you stick it onto a surface or let it stand on its own, and it’s great for preschool craft projects! You’ll need white origami paper, light yellow origami paper, orange origami paper, green origami paper, colored pens, glue, and so on.
It’s exciting to make each part—the mochi, the daidai (bitter orange), and the sanpō (the wooden stand)—separately and then assemble them.
Since the origami sizes differ for each part, please follow the video to check the sizes as you make it!