Make an adorable flying unicorn and rainbow craft for kids with just a paper plate, a few common crafting materials, and our free printable unicorn template. Children love watching their cute unicorns “fly” across the rainbow sky! This craft is perfect for any time of year, but would be especially fun to do for St. Patrick’s Day, during the spring season or for a unicorn themed birthday party.

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Did you love our recent waddling penguin craft? This flying unicorn craft works in a similar way, creating a spring or coil using a pipe cleaner to make the unicorn wobble and fly. Such a fun and cheerful craft! There are two versions to making the rainbow for this craft, one for smaller groups and one for larger groups of kids, so be sure to check them both out in the directions below.

See it in action here:

Flying Unicorn Paper Plate Craft for Kids

Materials for Flying Unicorn Craft

Heavy duty paper plate (The stiffer kind with the raised edges.)
Pipe cleaners in rainbow colors plus silver (We bought ours at our local craft store, but this set online has all the colors you need.)
Markers, crayons or colored pencils
Tape
Scissors
Watercolor or tempera paint and paintbrush (This is a pretty turquoise blue liquid watercolor, and I love this turquoise tempera paint.)
Cottonballs
Liquid glue
White cardstock
Optional: Googly eyes
Free printable unicorn template

Directions for Flying Unicorn Craft

1. Paint your paper plate with blue watercolor paint and let dry completely.

2. Print out the free printable unicorns onto white cardstock. Choose a unicorn to use for your flying unicorn craft.

3. Color the unicorn with the markers (or crayons, colored pencils etc.) and cut it out with scissors. Optional: Add googly eyes to your unicorn (or you can just draw them).

4.Grab a silver pipe cleaner and curl it around a marker to make a spring.

5. Straighten one end of the pipe cleaner and attach it to the back of the unicorn with tape. Set it aside.

6. Make a pipe cleaner rainbow.
There are two ways to do this, one with poking holes into the plate for your pipe cleaners and another with just taping the pipe cleaners onto the top of your plate. If you are just doing this with one child or a small group, the poking holes method would work, keeping in mind an adult needs to poke the holes. If doing this project with a large group, I’d use the taping the rainbow down method so kids can do it independently. You can see the taping method in the tutorial video at the top of this post. I’ll describe the poking hole method below:

To make the rainbow, use a marker or pencil to mark five dots on the edge of the plate going from the outside moving inwards. Repeat this with the other side of the plate.
Using the dots as guidelines, poke holes using the scissors. Adults only!
Feed the ends of the colored pipe cleaners into these holes, starting with the bottom (which should be purple if doing it scientifically correctly, otherwise, kids can do it in any order). Then add the next color and continue until all 5 pipe cleaners have been pushed through the holes on each side of the plate.
Twist the loose ends together under the plate to secure the rainbow. You can trim longer ends with scissors.

7. Use the glue to attach some cotton balls to the base of the rainbow to create some clouds. (If taping your pipe cleaners to your plate rather than poking them through the plate, the cotton balls will cover your tape so it can’t be seen.)

8. Now it’s time to attach your flying unicorn. Have an adult poke a hole in the center of the plate and feed the unicorn spring pipe cleaner in this hole. Tape it under the plate to secure it.

9. Give your unicorn a little nudge and watch him fly!

Tips and Ideas

Don’t have an assortment of pipe cleaners? Have kids make their own paper rainbow and tape it to their plates.
Use the unicorn page as a coloring page. Children can color in the unicorns and add details to the background.
If doing this project with a large group, be sure to pre-poke the hole in the plates for the unicorns.