Anyone feeling festive in your house? Looking for paper Christmas decorations to make at home? If so, these DIY Paper Christmas Lights are sure to be a hit!
They’re an awesome opportunity for exploring mathematical ideas like symmetry, fractions, division, shapes and more.
These children’s Christmas decorations to make at home are more suited to older children as little ones might find the instructions tricky to follow – but younger ones are likely to enjoy picking out the colours and helping you decide where to put your DIY paper Christmas lights!
These paper Christmas decorations will look awesome hanging above a fireplace or door, but you could also use them to brighten up a wall or bannister too!
Before we dive into how to make your own paper Christmas decorations, have you grabbed your copy of our 32-page activity eBook yet? You can get it for free here!
Materials
For these simple handmade paper Christmas decorations, all you need is:
- paper or card in white or grey plus any colours you want for the ‘lights’
- string or twine
- glue (a glue stick will work fine)
- single hole punch (or you can poke a hole with a pair of scissors – adults only!)
Check out the step-by-step instructions below!
Instructions
Here’s how to make these DIY paper Christmas lights.
1. Take a piece of grey or white paper/card and fold it into 8 equal strips. You can do this by folding it in half (landscape, not portrait), then folding in quarters, and then folding each quarter in half and opening the sheet of paper back out.
2. Cut along the fold lines to make 8 equal strips of paper. Take one strip and fold it into 8 equal sections. You can do this by folding it in half, then into quarters, and then folding each quarter in half too. Open the strip back out.
3. Put a dab of glue on the second section from one end, take the final section on the other end of the strip and stick it to the second section. You should now have a hexagon shape.
4. Punch two holes in it – they should be opposite each other.
5. Now take a coloured piece of paper or card and fold it into 8 equal strips, just like you did for the first piece – but this time, do it portrait – not landscape – so the strips are longer and thinner.
6. Take one of your coloured strips and fold it in half. Holding it by each end, bring your fingers towards each other a little and ‘bounce’ them a bit so the paper bends slightly into a bulb shape.
7. Punch a hole through the ends of the strip.
8. Repeat until you have as many bulbs as you need, then thread string or twine through them as you see in the picture.
Don’t forget to check out the video to see this all being done step-by-step – it’s really much easier than the written instructions might seem!
Thank you to Stubbornly Crafty for this awesome activity idea!
If your kids enjoy STEM Christmas crafts at home, they might like our easy salt dough stars activity.
Need low-cost, fun activity ideas?
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