Little kids will enjoy crushing paper for this crumpled paper lion craft! All you need are basic craft supplies and you can set up a fine motor activity!

When people talk about the benefits of arts and crafts for kids, most of them are related to mental and emotional benefits, like problem-solving, logical thinking etc. However, crafting also has physical benefits, especially for the fine motor muscles!

Doing crafts has more physical benefits than we think, like improving hand-eye coordination, strengthening grip and enhancing hand dexterity. Lots of actions help toward this end – cutting, folding, drawing, and a fun one – crumpling!

We’ve featured quite a few paper crumpling crafts earlier – a crumpled paper hedgehog, a crumpled paper sunflower, a crumpled paper turtle and a crumpled paper flower card for Mother’s Day.

Today we add another one to the list – a cute little crumpled paper lion craft for kids! Go ahead and have fun crumpling paper!

Contents show

Easy Crumpled Paper Lion Craft for Kids

Supplies required:

Craft paper
Pencil
Scissors
Craft glue
Craft tissue paper
Sharpies

How to make the Crumpled Paper Lion Craft:

1. Download and print the crumpled paper lion craft template. The template includes parts of the lion, like the head, mane, eyes, forehead, body, tail and tail tip.

2. Trace the parts of the lion on craft paper of the appropriate colors and cut them out. We’ve chosen yellow for the lion’s head, body and tail, a light orange for the forehead triangle and a dark orange for the mane.

3. Let’s start our crumpled paper lion craft by sticking the head inside the mane, so that there is a ring of orange all around the lion’s head.

4. Stick the little triangle inside the lion’s head, so that the curved edges align and the pointy end faces towards the center of the lion’s face. The first part of your crumpled paper lion craft is ready!

5. Stick the bushy tail tip to the end of the lion’s tail.

6. Attach the completed tail to one side of the body’s lower section.

7. Apply some glue to the top edge of the lion’s body. Stick the head here. The base of your crumpled paper lion craft is done!

8. Now it’s time to move on to the ‘crumpled’ part of our crumpled paper lion craft – the tissue paper! Cut the tissue paper into little squares of side 4 cm. Once you have enough squares, crumple each square into a little ball. This is the fine motor activity we were talking about!

9. Once all your crumpled balls are ready, apply some glue on the lion’s mane – the visible part around the head. Stick the crumpled balls one by one on the mane, close to each other.

10. Continue till the visible mane area is completely covered by crumpled balls, and there is no space visible in between. Make sure you don’t cover the ears too! Stick a crumpled ball on the tip of the tail too, if you like.

11. Attach eye cutouts to the head and use a black Sharpie to draw the nose and mouth of the lion.

12. Use a light orange marker to mark the lion’s forelegs, as shown in the image below. That’s it – your crumpled paper lion craft is all done!

How cute is this crumpled paper lion craft? It’s a fun project for siblings to do together, where the older child can cut out the parts and the younger one can crumple the paper and help stick the crumpled balls. If your kids have been fighting more than usual and you’re looking for a bonding activity, maybe this cute little lion can help!

If you’d like to make more lion crafts, you’ll like these: