Kiddy Craft: Chinese Lantern for CNY

Chinese New Year is approaching... to keep my boiboi occupied last weekend, I got him to make some lanterns using some old angpow (red) packets. He thoroughly enjoyed himself cos he loves to use the scissors since its a forbidden or rather controlled usage item. There was once recently I left him just for a short while to go to the kitchen to fetch something, my little terror ran in to tell me "Mummy, I cut your lights!!!"... he snipped the fairy lights into 2!!!! I know he was scared cos he had this worried look on his face. Luckily it's day time and the lights are not switched on!

I scolded him a bit when I went to check the damage. Anyway, later during breakfast, little terror turned angel when he uttered without any reminder or coaxing "Mummy, I'm sorry I cut your lights." with you know... the poor little puppy face?? Heart totally melted. Anyway, his daddy lectured him on the danger part when he came back in the evening but I wonder if he will ever remember! It's hard to get such messages across to boiboi cos he tends to be forgetful but when it comes to cars, toys, cartoons, games... wahliau... can remember every single details. Usually we'll let him have a taste of the danger of certain stuff we would want to instill in him (under supervision of course) but electric shock, how leh? Anyone have any tips to share?

Back to the lantern project, I'm gonna share it here for my friend just like what I did for the Boat craft.

First get some rectangular shaped angpow packets. Fold into half on the longer sides. Using pen and ruler, draw some lines across leaving a bit of gap (about half cm) at the edge (see pics below). Next get your kid to cut on those lines. Ensure kid does not cut all the way thru haha...

Next step, take the 2 corners diagonally to each other and place 1 corner on top of another. Then staple the corners together. You can hold the corner together and let your kid to staple them but they might not have enough strength.

Boiboi's lanterns on the left and mine on the right. Hahaha not very neat but hey, he did put in great effort there.

I asked him to hang on the fibre optic cherry blossom tree. He was very happy decorating the tree with his lanterns and he told me "When daddy come back, he's gonna love it". Sweet hor?

So what are you waiting for??? Get your kids, nieces, nephews, little cousins etc and start this lantern project. The return is priceless...