Chinese New Year Horse

The Chinese believe that people born in a particular year will take on the characteristics of the animal associated with that year. This year the Chinese New Year (Friday 31st January 2014) is the year of the horse – which is the one that I was born in.

Those born in the Chinese New Year of the horse are hardworking, kind, ambitious, determined, clever, make efforts to improve ourselves. But we are also impatient, rarely listen to advice and often do not get projects finished.

I think it is important that my children learn about how different people around the World celebrate different things and in different ways. We like to craft and so I thought that this was a good way to introduce them to the Chinese New Year. The obvious Chinese New Year Craft for me was obviously to make a horse – and what better way than with old toilet (and kitchen) roll holders. I am hugely inspired by RedTedArt and have learned since doing this craft that it would have been a better idea to use masking tape to hold the legs and body together and then paint over it – such as in her example of a camel here.

The thing about toilet roll holder crafts that I like most is the simplistic nature of them. All my children can get involved and it’s never long before there’s some more TRHs that need recycling. As the cost is minimal it doesn’t matter where they end up after we have finished playing with them too.

We simply painted our rolls brown and then attached the body (kitchen roll holder) to the legs (with glue and a lot of pressure). Some of the rolls were longer than the others so I cut them to be the same size. The off-cuts were then utilised as ears. We glued on feathers for head hair and a tail. We added a cereal box circle to the end of the ‘head’ roll for a nose and mouth to be drawn on – and not forgetting some googly eyes.

I decided to make the horse lying down as it was particularly hard to get it to stay stuck together. I used paper-clips to hold bits (like the ears) in place whilst the glue dried.

Are you a horse too?

Were you born between:

02/11/1918-01/31/1919

01/30/1930-02/16/1931

02/15/1942-02/04/1943

02/03/1954-01/23/1955

01/21/1966-02/08/1967

02/07/1978-01/27/1979

01/27/1990-02/14/1991

02/12/2002-01/31/2003

The signs in order are: Rat, Ox, Tiger, Rabbit, Dragon, Snake, Horse, Sheep, Monkey, Rooster, Dog and Pig.

Other Fantastic Chinese New Year Crafts

If you liked the craft using a toilet roll then check out this Toilet Roll Holder Dragon Puppets  on Jennifer’s Little World.

Stick Shadow Puppet on Kidschaos

Candy Cane horse on Domestic Goddesque

Chinese New Year Pupper Theatre on Makie do

China themed day over on Facebook.

Paper Plate Dragon

 & Chinese New Year Fans on Peakle Pie

and a Paper Plate horse  on Peakle Pie

Firecracker Chinese New Year Decoration over on Me and My Shadow

Chinese New Year tea light holder on The Gingerbread House

Chinese New Year Crafts on Diary of the Evans Crittens

Chinese New Year Crafts on Crystals Tiny Treasures

Hodge Podge Craft has a Dancing Dragon

This is not a sponsored post.