Our Monthly Tip: Involve Young Children in a Celebration of Life Event with a Colorful Memorial Lantern Project

Colorful handmade lanterns light up a sad day.
Credit: Mud&bloom.com

Our Tip of the Month

If you’re planning a celebration of life where young children might be present, one way you can honor their age and include them in the day is to plan a meaningful activity or craft that allows them to participate and express themselves in an age-appropriate way.  

For a sweet and simple celebration of life project, children can add a splash of color to the ceremony with memorial lanterns that they can make with jam jars and bright tissue paper.

This month’s tip is inspired by Mud & Bloom, a fantastic blog brimming with arts & crafts ideas for kids, as they, too, experience grief. Children attending a celebration of life event will appreciate a creative activity to channel their grief and contribute to the memorial event. They’ll create a special memento for the person who died. Adults might even enjoy participating in this creative, meditative act, while they guide and supervise young children. 

A simple and colorful craft project for kids will result in heartwarming handmade memorial lanterns. Once finished, lighting the candles to illuminate the lanterns will brighten up the service and honor the loved one.
Credit: Mud&bloom

How-to Suggestions

Mud & Bloom provides pictures and instructions as to how to bring the memorial lantern to life on their blog. The idea is pretty simple. Have a mason jar set-up for each child at a table with a pair of age-appropriate scissors, and an abundance of sheets of colorful tissue paper that they’ll cut and glue onto the glass jars. 

Have a finished product to show them, which will include a candle inside, real or fake, depending on your preference. Explain that they’re going to be making a special lantern for the friend or family member that they’ve lost. You can ask them questions about what they remember about their loved one, therefore broaching the subject and channeling their memories into the memorial lantern project. 

Once the children have finished their lanterns, leave them to dry. You might want to get fans to speed up the drying process, especially if you plan to use the lanterns immediately. You can add wire around the mouth of the jar so they are easy to carry. You can hang them or place them somewhere of significance. Maybe you’ll take them home as a reminder that the person is still with us, that we carry them with us. 

Colorful and rustic, the lanterns will allow the hands of children experiencing loss to be present at the celebration of life ceremony. Some lanterns may display blocky cut-outs of tissue paper that resemble something like Cubism. Others might demonstrate carefully cut out strips. We all deal with loss differently: neatly, messily. This memorial lantern project can be a touching reflection of that simple fact and a meaningful way to process grief and heal in community.