paper dream catchers

Here’s a simple paper dream catcher created from a paper plate. Kids will love making the paper “web” in the centre and decorating the outside of the plate.

While we based these paper dream catchers loosely on the traditional Native American craft, they have been modified so they are easy to make for young children. We respect the Native American culture and no offence has been intended.

Is there a person out there who doesn’t wish good dreams on their babies?

My youngest has the bad habit of getting up repeatedly after we put her to bed. She’s also prone to crawling out of her own comfy bed and into mine in the middle of the night. Sometimes I carry her back to her own bedroom and tuck her in yet again, but other times I’m too zonked out and just make a bit of room. Needless to say, none of us are getting a good night’s sleep right now.

It’s probably wishful thinking to expect our pretty paper decorations will help alleviate the “can’t sleep” problem. But still, at an age when magic seems real there’s a good chance it will help calm some of her night fears. When she get’s up its often to tell me she’s afraid of monsters, the dark, spiders, a noise or even just shadows.

We made these colourful dream catchers to hang above the girls’ beds. While we made them we talked about how Native Americans believed dream catchers caught the bad dreams in the web and allowed only the good dreams to pass through. Maybe if my daughter believes she’ll have good dreams there’s a better chance of a good night’s sleep for all of us!

We did this craft over 2 days, because you need to paint the paper plates & then wait for them to dry. This is how we did it:

How to make a paper dream catcher

You will need

• Paper plates
• Paints and brushes
• Coloured craft paper – we used card stock but ordinary construction paper would also work
• Raffia or crepe paper
• Feathers
• Plastic jewels to decorate
• Glue or double sided tape

How To:

First cut a hole in your paper plate, then paint it whatever colour you like. You could paint a second plate to stick over the top once the inside web is finished if desired, but I didn’t bother since ours are just being hung on the wall and you won’t see the back.

Allow to dry. I find that darker colours (like purple) need a second coat.

I used a craft knife and ruler to cut lots of strips from the coloured craft paper, mine are all exactly 5mm wide. Obviously if using a craft knife this is a grown up job but you can just as easily cut it up with scissors for a more kid-friendly version.

I put double sided tape all the way around on the underside and the girls took it from there sticking on the paper strips to make the web. You could use glue if you prefer.

You can see these dream catchers don’t look too pretty on the back. We’ve designed them to hang against a wall, but if you do need the back to look good (e.g. if you want to suspend your dream catcher from the roof in the middle of the room), you could paint an extra paper plate and glue it over the top of the messy back strip ends. You would need to paint the indented side rather than the shaped back so the plates sandwich together well.

Cut 20-30cm lengths of the raffia or crepe paper (we used raffia) and stick them on the bottom edge with double sided tape (or glue)

Stick feathers on the ends of the raffia strips, then turn over and decorate the front with jewel stickers and extra feathers.

They looked pretty hanging outside in the tree but of course being paper we brought them back inside again and hung them in the house.

Miss R and Miss K now have their very own hand-made paper dream catcher to help bring them pleasant dreams.

More paper plate crafts for kids

• Make a paper plate Ringtail possum using our printable template
• Kids will love making this paper plate rocking bee – so cute!
• Create one of 14 marine animals from our printable paper plate ocean animal collection
• We also have a paper plate dinosaur collection kids will love