[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 Craft Ideas Special! A Collection of Projects You Can Enjoy Even After Making Them (91–100)
Let’s make postcards with vegetable stamps!
There are parts of vegetables that we cut off and don’t use in cooking, right? Let’s try turning those usually discarded parts into stamps and make New Year’s cards! You can use any vegetables you like—onions, green peppers, carrots, lotus root, spinach, and so on.
Prepare several vegetable stamps with different shapes.
Once you’ve got your veggies ready, dip them in paint or ink and start stamping.
They might look like flowers or animal faces—your imagination will surely expand.
Try expressing the design side of the postcard with your stamped artwork.
Magnetic Fukuwarai
Let’s play with magnet sheets and a whiteboard! Here are some ideas for magnetic Fukuwarai.
Fukuwarai is one of Japan’s traditional games, typically enjoyed during New Year’s celebrations.
It’s a unique game where you place facial parts—eyes, nose, mouth, ears, eyebrows—onto a face in the correct spots while keeping your eyes closed.
This time, let’s make a version using magnet sheets.
What you’ll need: magnet sheets, a whiteboard, a pencil, paper, construction paper, scissors, a craft knife, and double-sided tape.
This should also help solve the common problem of pieces shifting out of place while you play!
[Handprints and Cardboard Stamps] Lion Dance
Try making a festive New Year’s shishimai (lion dance) using handprints! You can also enjoy stamp play.
First, make a handprint with green paint on construction paper.
If you spread your fingers wide, it will look more like a shishimai.
Next, use a rolled-up piece of cardboard as a stamp to dab red paint and create the costume’s pattern.
The teacher should prepare the lion’s facial parts in advance, and then work together with the children to glue them on and draw the expressions.
A lively, dynamic shishimai will boost the New Year spirit!
New Year hanging decorations
This is a New Year’s hanging decoration made by adorning a ribbon with auspicious items.
You create New Year’s motifs like kagami mochi, sea bream (tai), battledores (hagoita), and spinning tops (koma) by cutting and pasting construction paper.
You can also add accents such as pieces made from tissue paper or small fans.
By changing the overall color scheme, you can give it a calm or a pop look, so feel free to adjust it depending on where you’ll display it.
If you’re making it with children, you can enjoy the process together by cutting the construction paper and gluing the pieces in place.
Fluffy kagami mochi made with tissue paper
A fluffy tissue-paper kagami mochi you can make together while playing with the kids! It’s a perfect craft for little ones.
Just crumple tissue paper or facial tissue, put it into a plastic bag, tie the opening, and shape it into a ball.
Make two of these, attach them to a backing with double-sided tape, and add decorations like a tangerine and chiyogami paper to finish! Rolling the tissue to resemble mochi and pressing to stick things on helps develop children’s fine motor skills.
Adjust the number of steps to suit their age, and create a seasonal wall display full of festive flair!