In real life, the “King Of The Jungle” may be a little scary, but when it comes to paper plate crafts, lions are bright, colorful, and marvelous creatures! This fun and easy project is ideal for kids of all ages with no skills required. My preschoolers had a blast creating these paper lions together with simple and cheap supplies I already had at home.
Once finished, you can tape a popsicle stick to the back to create handheld masks they can use for imaginative play. A memorable craft and an activity all wrapped up into one!
Gather Your Supplies!
- paper plates
- yellow washable paint & brush
- colorful construction paper
- scissors
- glue stick
- marker
- googly eyes (or you can draw on eyes)
- An optional popsicle stick and tape to create a handle once finished
Step 1To start this project, I used three different colors of construction paper for the lion’s mane. I recommend making strips of paper out of them in several different lengths to give it more depth and interest. My 4 year old had no problem cutting the strips out with drawn lines for reference, but younger children will definitely need help with this part.
Step 2Here’s the part every kid loves! Painting! There’s just something relaxing about it. I simply squirt a bit of washable yellow paint directly onto the paper plates and then let my preschoolers spread it around until their plates were fully covered.
Step 3Once the paint has had a few minutes to dry, break out your glue stick! Glue the strips of paper all around the back edge of the paper plates starting with the shortest strips first. We layered ours with yellow, orange, and then brown.
Step 4This is where these lion’s really come to life! Add a cute little face by cutting out ears and a nose with your construction paper. Glue on your eyes and then draw on his mouth and whiskers with a marker.
Step 5To turn these lions into handheld masks, we taped a popsicle stick to the back so the kids could have a little bit of wild pretend time, running around the jungle and roaring like ferocious lions.
You won’t believe how impressive this cute animal craft turns out even with the littlest of hands creating them! The colorful mane and googly eyes really make them come to life, especially when your kids make roaring sounds for hours on end even after craft time has ended.
Now that my daughter is almost 3, she’s finally old enough to sit and do crafty things with her older brother. He enjoys bossing her around, and always lets her know when she’s doing something wrong, but the two of them completing a project together made me tear up a little. So sweet to watch them working together as a team!
The great thing about this craft is that’s it’s SO EASY to make for little hands! The kids get a chance to work on their hand-eye coordination and gluing skills while also creating something really cool they can be proud of.
Helpful Tips
- We made our paper strips approximately 2, 3, and 4 inches long but there’s no right or wrong way to do this! That’s the beauty of a lion’s mane, it should be MESSY. In fact, you could even tear your paper instead of cutting it.
- I recommend the cheap, flimsy paper plates for this craft because they are flexible and easy to work with. There are a million paper plate crafts so you might as well stock up!
- I prefer to use craft supplies I’ve already got at home (no need to run to the craft store and spend money), so get creative with whatever you have at home. The lion’s mane could be made with just about anything including tissue paper, dried leaves, yarn, etc.
- I think this would be a great school project for preschool or kindergarten students. The paper can all be prepped ahead of time and then the kids can all get crafty at their desk for a fun art project.
