Diwali Lantern Crafts for Kids

Diwali is known as the Festival of Light, and it’s all about light overcoming darkness, so it makes sense that lanterns would be a big part of the celebration. There are lots of fun ways to make lanterns at home or in the classroom to celebrate, so let’s look at some Diwali lantern craft ideas that you can of course use any other time of the year as well.

This cute lantern from The Joy of Sharing was the one that got me started thinking about diy lantern crafts. It’s made with tracing paper and Popsicle sticks, and little ones can at least help with the coloring if not putting it all together.

The paper lantern at Artsy Craftsy Mom involves cutting windows out of card stock that are then decorated with tissue paper and stickers. Adults can do the cutting while kids of any age can help decorate. A printable template is included to help you with the cutting. She also has a cute classic paper lantern made with glitter paper for extra fun.

Likewise with this one that uses cardboard as the frame from The Crafty Angels. You can cut out the pieces and let kids decorate with yarn, beads or anything else on a string that they might want to add.

For older kids I found a few videos of different kinds of lanterns that are really cool but might take more patience and dexterity than our little ones have. The Kandil lamp from Craft Nifty Creations (the one with the blue flowers shown above) is mostly a lot of gluing. Punekar Sneha has one made with lots of paper loops, which little kids could help with ones the strips are cut. And this gorgeous origami lamp from Being Artsy starts with a piece of posterboard that’s cut and folded to lovely result.

My Cool World Arts and Activities on Teachers Pay Teachers has a printable Diwali lantern kids can color and then make into a lantern. These would be lovely as classroom decorations.

Also be sure to check out some Diwali printables, coloring pages and a cute book about Diwali.

I did a post earlier this year with activities and ideas for teaching the alphabet, but a lot or learning letters and recognizing them just has to do with seeing them and working with them a lot.

That means coloring, tracing, identifying things that start with different letters and more.

One way to reinforce the letters is through little activity books like these cute printable alphabet books from Life Over Cs.

These are available for free when you subscribe to her newsletter, and I’d say that’s well worth it if you have a little one (or a group of little ones!) working on the alphabet and letter recognition.

Each mini book includes a collection of things that start with that letter to color, color and read with words that start with the letter, tracing the letter, finding the letter in a grid and other coloring pages with objects that start with that letter.

These little books are super useful reinforcing the different letters and giving kids different activities related to the letters.

If you do a letter of the day or letter of the week you can use a new book for each one, and then keep the copies in your reading center or in a basket where kids can look at them again.

And of course you can add in all the other letter activities you like, go on a scavenger hunt for items that start with that letter, read alphabet books, practice writing letters in rice or with pompoms or playdough or whatever sensory activities you like.

You can grab the free printables when you enter you email address at Life Over Cs, and check out her other great alphabet resources and activities while you are over there.

Do you have favorite activities for teaching letters to kids? I’d love to hear about them!

[Photo: Life Over Cs]

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