Lantern Fest otherwise known as
St Martins is celebrated every November in Austrian Kindergartens. For years it was a festival I couldn't relate to because I had never heard of it before moving here and working in a Kindergarten.
There are no songs in English I could use except Twinkle Twinkle Little Star and not much else I could offer in English except some stories about it being light and dark. However over the years I have written my own songs and even made some lanterns. Here are a couple of my lanterns...
Star Lanterns
These lanterns are really easy to make if you like working with paper mache. Collect those free newspapers and get yourself some wallpaper paste and you are off to a good start.
I used balloons to get the right shape and if you have something flat to stick to the bottom (round cheese boxes are good) before adding the paper mache then they will stand up on their own. Otherwise you will have to make a dent in the bottom when they are dry.
This can be a messy project but it is a lot of fun for the kids and they love getting their hands into the wallpaper paste. I hung the covered balloons on a piece of wool to let them dry and if you can make these on a Friday and leave them over the weekend you won't have to put up with them hanging around all over the room.
The kids picked which colour to paint the lanterns once they were dry and the balloon had been taken out. I then cut off the top added a metal handle. We only use LED candles nowadays so there is no way the kids are burning themselves.
Because St Martins is also about sharing I cut five stars out of each lantern. I placed them all in a box and each child was allowed to pick five stars out of the box to glue onto their lantern. So we all shared a part of our lantern with others.
Pumpkin Lantern
Halloween and Lantern Fest are pretty close together so this is a nice time saving lantern to make.
It is the same lantern as above but made into a pumpkin. You can make them for Halloween and then use them for Lantern Fest and save yourself a lot of hassle and stress.
You can make the pumpkin for Halloween and then in the days up until Lantern fest you can 'pimp' him up a little by adding some glitter or even changing his face. You can also cut a second face on the back of the lantern. There are many possibilities. Just take a few moments to think about it.
Traditional Lantern
The traditional lanterns you see here are made of the round boxes you get cheese triangles in. You either save them up all year or order them with the paper that fits the boxes.
There are so many ways you can decorate the lanterns and I have seen so many different ones over the years. However this is one I made a couple of years ago that I really liked.
First we got two kids who wanted to 'share' their lanterns with each other and they picked two coloured (you can pick more if you want but we didn't want to go overboard) wax crayons and sharpened them. The kids collected the shavings and put them between their two transparent waxy like papers (you can order to make your lanterns). The using a clothes iron I melted the wax between the two papers. Now you can also use one piece of lantern paper and baking paper but that seems a little wasteful when you have so many kids ;)
This makes some wonderful patterns but it seemed a little boring and easy for our older kids. So using black paper the kids made a 'street' silhouette, cut out some windows and added colourful tissue paper. The result is what you see in the picture above.
Each one was different and unique. The kids loved them and the parents commented on them too. It wasn't easy and there were a lot of steps but it was well worth it to see them glowing on St Marins!
Do you have any Lantern Arts & crafts ideas you want to share?
Feel free to add them in the comments section!
