Koinobori means “carp streamer” in Japanese, and refer to carp-shaped windsocks traditionally flown in Japan to celebrate Children’s Day. These wind socks are made by drawing carp patterns on paper, cloth or other nonwoven fabric, and then allowed to flutter in the wind.

I have a tons of toilet paper tubes I’ve saved for various crafts, and these made the perfect base for this activity.

I had rolls of paper streamers from parties over the years and these were perfect for decorating my koinobori.

We cut little scales out of the paper with scissors – my preschooler loves to cut paper and spent a great deal of time cutting out more scales than we could possibly ever need!

We glued each scale onto the tubes in descending fashion.

We alternated the colors to make pretty patterns on our carp fish bodies.

Next we cut strips of paper from the streamers for the “tail” part of our carp fish, and glued them into place. We punched holes on the top of our fish and threaded a piece of ribbon to hang our fish from.

As a finishing touch, we added googly eyes to our fishes.

How cute did these turn out?

Too bad it’s below freezing out and snowing otherwise we’d be flying these little kites!