Chinese New Year 2016 - Year Of The Monkey Craft For Kids

This year 2016, Chinese New Year begins on 8th February 2016. I mentioned "begins" instead of "falls on" because the Chinese New Year celebration is really 15 days long culminating in the Chap Goh Meh (which stands for "the fifteenth night") celebration. In between, there are a couple of important days to celebrate too. You can read all about the days of festivities during Chinese New Year from wikipedia.

This year 2016, is the Year of the Monkey according to the Chinese Zodiac. I have two monkeys in my house, my father and my son. The Chinese Zodiac goes on a 12 year cycle so they are about 7 cycles apart. Amazing, now that I come to think of it. You can secretly tell a person's age by asking for their animal sign according to Chinese Zodiac.

The Chinese like red and orange (which sounds like "gold") so I'm going to use red and orange/gold for my Year of the Monkey Chinese New Year 2016 craft for kids.

This is a very simple craft. You can do it in minutes. I gathered all the craft materials from leftover stuff in my house. I always keep knick knacks so we can craft anytime. We used to be able to do crafting a lot when the kids were very much younger but now that they are grown and in school, we have a lot less time for it.

Here's what you will need:

• Construction Paper (preferably red, orange, gold)
• Sharpie
• Stamp Pad 
• Glue 
• Hole Puncher
• Ribbon

Notes: We used leftover Chinese calligraphy paper from previous years for our craft. They are long and come with pre printed design making it excellent for Chinese New Year Crafts. We used thin red ribbon with a gold trim. If you don't have red paper. You can use white or other colours and use a red stamp pad instead. Stamping on different coloured paper may produce different results as you can see. Our purple stamp looks nice on white paper but looks almost black on the red one.

Chinese New Year Craft For Kids Materials

Instructions for our Chinese New Year 2016 Year of the Monkey Craft For Kids: 

We're making a See No Evil, Hear No Evil, Speak No Evil fingerprint Monkey trio bookmark. You can use the same idea to make Chinese New Year homemade cards instead of a bookmark.

1. Gather all the materials you will need
2. Cut the paper into two rectangles. The red rectangular paper should be slightly smaller than the orange one
3. Cut the ribbon into size
4. Punch a hole at the top of the orange paper
5. Tie in the ribbon
6. Practice making fingerprint monkeys on another piece of paper. Use your little finger for the head and your thumb for the body. Then draw in the ears, tail and hands. The first pair of hands goes over the eye area, the second goes over the ears and the third to cover the mouth area
7. Once you are happy with your fingerprint monkeys, do the same on the red paper
8. Glue the red paper over the orange one
9. Write a Chinese New Year message at the bottom area of the bookmark
10. Happy Chinese New Year 2016!

Craft Supplies For Chinese New Year Homemade Craft For Kids

Practice making your fingerprint monkeys on a separate piece of paper

Chinese New Year 2016 Hear No Evil, See No Evil, Speak No Evil Monkey Trio Bookmark

We hope you like our Chinese New Year homemade bookmark craft for kids. Happy Chinese New Year 2016!