[Nursery/Kindergarten] New Year’s wall decorations! A collection of craft ideas to enjoy with children
In daycare centers and kindergartens, New Year’s craft projects are essential for sharing the joy of welcoming the new year with children.
Wall decorations featuring auspicious motifs like daruma dolls, kagami mochi, and the shishi-mai lion dance add a festive touch to the classroom.
There are many ways for children to express their individuality, such as stamp painting with tempera, origami, and three-dimensional creations using cotton.
Here, we present craft ideas that capture the spirit of the New Year.
Refer to the meanings behind each piece and tips tailored to different age groups, and enjoy the New Year atmosphere together with the children!
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[Nursery/Kindergarten] New Year’s Wall Decorations! A Collection of Craft Ideas to Enjoy with Children (11–20)
Making Daruma dolls
Cute with a traditional Japanese vibe! Here’s a recommended Daruma craft for the New Year to make with kids.
You’ll need red and white construction paper, glue or another adhesive, chiyogami (Japanese patterned paper), and pens for drawing the face.
First, cut out the Daruma body and face from the construction paper and glue the face onto the body.
Next, attach pieces of cut chiyogami to the belly area, and add arms and legs made from colored paper to finish! Using a brush pen or even blush for the face can make it extra cute.
Adjust the cutting and gluing steps to suit the children’s ages and have fun with it.
Colorful spinning tops
Let’s make colorful, vibrant New Year-style spinning tops using paper plates and origami.
Use a paper plate cut in half as the body of the top.
First, color the paper plate with your favorite colors using crayons or colored pencils.
Then, paste small torn pieces of origami paper on top to create mosaic-like patterns on the top.
You can use plain origami, patterned origami, or chiyogami to give it a festive New Year’s look.
Finally, attach the axle part made from colored construction paper, and it’s complete.
Shishimai (lion dance) with handprints and cardboard stamps
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’s first calligraphy drawn freely
Perfect for New Year’s! Here are some creative ideas for kakizome (first calligraphy of the year).
Even if we say “kakizome,” this is a free-form version that even children who can’t write characters yet can try.
Depending on age, let them try drawing pictures, writing characters, or simple words.
After they do their kakizome on drawing paper, paste it onto a slightly larger sheet to serve as a backing.
Then attach rolled sheets of paper to the top and bottom to give it a hanging scroll look.
Finally, add pre-made parts like a rabbit daruma, a gold fan, and pieces of washi-patterned origami, and it’s done! For younger children, it’s best to prepare the parts in advance so they can simply stick them on like stickers.
Hanging ema (votive plaques)
@chooobo2 Hanging ema (votive plaque) crafting 🎍#Childcare Crafting#Nursery School Craft# January productionNew Year’s craft#Ema Production
♬ WOW – IVE
We’ll introduce a hanging ema plaque craft made with bleeding art, finger stamps, and origami.
Start by drawing with water-based markers in your favorite colors on aluminum foil.
Spray with water to float the colors, then transfer them onto the plaque to create a bleeding effect.
Add patterns to the snake with finger stamps, glue on cut pieces of origami paper, and it’s done.
You can also swap the snake for a daruma using the same method—it’s adorable too.
Enjoying paint gradients and finger stamping helps children explore their own ways of expression, so we recommend adjusting the activity to suit the child’s age.
Fluffy colorful sheep

Perfect for winter! Here’s a cute sheep wall art project to make with kids using crayons and cotton.
You’ll need colored construction paper, cotton, crayons, wood glue, and a pen.
Beforehand, the teacher draws the shapes of the sheep’s body, face, legs, and horns on construction paper.
Have the children cut out the shapes with scissors.
On the colored construction paper that will be the background, color in heavily with crayons.
Next, roll the cotton into a ball that fits in the child’s palm, and rub the cotton over the crayon until it picks up color.
Glue the cut-out pieces together with wood glue, then spread wood glue on the sheep’s body and stick on the cotton—done! Drawing the face and other details with crayons makes it even cuter.
[Nursery/Kindergarten] New Year’s wall decorations! A collection of craft ideas to enjoy with children (21–30)
Wall decorations featuring 17 oni as the main characters

This is a Setsubun wall art piece that’s complete with just a single sheet of poster paper.
It depicts 17 ogres fleeing from holly and chili peppers used as talismans, along with plum blossoms and kumquats that evoke the coming of spring.
The plum blossoms and kumquats look lifelike, and each ogre has a unique expression, making it engaging to look at.
It’s made using only construction paper and origami paper, with simple steps, so people of a wide range of ages can enjoy creating it.
How about working together to produce one large collaborative masterpiece?



