[Childcare] Winter Projects You’ll Want to Try! Recommended Craft Ideas

Let’s enjoy New Year’s games!

[Ages 0–2] Let’s Enjoy New Year’s Games!

Let’s set up various stations in the playground so the children can experience New Year’s traditions.

We’ll introduce five activities: rice-cake pounding (mochitsuki), spinning tops (koma), karuta card games, kite flying (takoage), and visiting a shrine to offer prayers.

For mochitsuki, we’ll actually use a mortar and pestle to pound the mochi, while the tops, karuta, kites, and shrine are all handmade.

By making good use of cardboard and milk cartons, you can create remarkably authentic items.

Children can play with the toys you’ve made, or they can take on the challenge of making them themselves.

Enjoy New Year’s experiences suited to the children’s ages.

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Cute Daruma origami

[ New Year Origami ] Easy and Cute Daruma Folding Method | Origami Daruma

Auspicious! Making colorful daruma with the children and lining them up as decorations would instantly brighten up the room, wouldn’t it? Daruma are often displayed as New Year’s ornaments, and it’s said their origin as lucky charms comes from their characteristic of getting back up even after they fall.

It’s also lovely to make them with origami in the children’s favorite colors.

However, since the colors of daruma each carry meaning, it can be a great time to deepen learning while crafting.

This is a recommended idea for preschool classes, so be sure to give it a try.

Cute wobbly daruma doll

[Preschool Craft] New Year’s decoration: cute wobbly Daruma | Daruma doll for New Year’s decoration

Let’s make a cute daruma that wobbles when you poke it.

You’ll need a paper plate, construction paper, and a pen.

Please prepare construction paper in four colors for the body, face, eyes, and decorations.

First, cut the body piece of construction paper into a circle to match the size of the paper plate.

Next, cut an oval from the face-colored paper, and cut two small circles from the eye-colored paper.

Glue them in order—body, face, then eyes—and draw the pupils with the pen.

Then cut three ovals from the decorative paper and stick them below the face.

Fold the paper plate in half and attach the daruma to one side—that’s it! If you’re making this with small children, adults should prepare the parts in advance.

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Let’s make a hat with wax-resist painting!

Crayon-resist Art: Perfect winter crafts for 4- to 5-year-olds! A preschool teacher explains how to make hats and mittens.

Let’s enjoy wax-resist painting with winter-themed motifs! First, draw a hat and a pair of mittens on white paper.

Have the children trace the outlines with a white crayon, then let them add any patterns they like.

Since they’ll be drawing white on white, it’s hard to see—but hang in there! Once the patterns are done, paint over everything with watercolor diluted with water.

This will make the patterns drawn with the white crayon appear as if they’re popping out.

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A plump, cute long-tailed tit (Shima-enaga)

Origami: How to fold a plump long-tailed tit

Let’s make a cute long-tailed tit (shima-enaga) from Hokkaido with origami.

You’ll need 7.5 cm square origami paper, round stickers, a black pen, two strips cut lengthwise from a 15 cm square sheet of brown origami paper (each 1/4 the width), scissors, glue, and so on.

The step for folding the long-tailed tit’s wings is a bit complex, so children will likely feel more comfortable working carefully together with a teacher or guardian.

The finished long-tailed tit can stand on its own, so it looks adorable as is, but if you make a branch out of the brown origami and combine them, you can bring out even more charm.