close-up of three painted and crafted wooden mice

Holidays

Lunar New Year Craft: Year of the Rat Little Wooden Mice

This Lunar New Year celebrates the Year of the Rat starting on January 25th. We had so much fun making Lunar New Year of the Rat Ears and Crown that we didn’t want to stop making crafts to celebrate.

So we saved some of our felt supplies from our crowns to make tiny rat magnets with some wooden beads (these flat bottomed doll head beads worked best so they didn’t roll) that I had on hand. (Because we use magnets for safety purposes this craft is for older children.)

First, you paint the beads with gray-colored craft paint. Then attach tiny rat ears (I cut small rounded triangles from the felt and then cut a tiny slit in the middle of the bottom of so each ear could wedge onto the bead and give it some realistic curl).

Then attach a tiny tail (all with hot glue– to be used by responsible crafters only– because it’s super-fast drying for those of us who have no patience when crafting).

Lastly, paint on a tiny face with some craft paint and ta-da!… super cute tiny wooden rat!

Here’s a handy tip for painting tiny faces: use the handle end to create nice round dots for the nose and the white of the eyes. Then use a tiny paintbrush to paint in a black dot inside the white dot to create eyeballs.

We decided to attach magnets to the bottom of our beads to make them even more fun. Who doesn’t want a trio of tiny rats living on the top of their fridge?

This actually worked out really well because I cut slits in a paper plate (with an exacto knife– to be used by a responsible crater) and then stuck the magnets through the plate so that the little rats would stay stationary on the plates while they were transported home without rolling around. This might have even helped with the painting process but we didn’t figure out this tip until afterward. Bonus for you!