The other week, Owen learned how to fold these paper ninja stars from a friend at church, and he has been making tons of them! Great project for a rainy day. All you need is some paper, and you’re ready to go. We added Sharpies too for decorating the ninja stars with fun designs.

We made some of our ninja stars with colored paper and some with white paper. Origami paper would work too! Just don’t use card stock – it’s too heavy to fold like this.

Update: We’ve added video instructions! See the bottom of the post for the video!

This post was originally published in May 2017, and updated in March 2020.

Step 1: If you’re starting with 8.5″ x 11″ paper, fold it over as shown to create a square. Cut off the excess.

You’ll need two pieces of paper for each ninja star. It’s fun to use two different colors!

Step 2: Fold each square piece of paper in half to make a crease down the center.

Step 3: Open the paper back up. The fold each side over to the center line. Do this with both squares.

Step 4: Fold each piece of paper in half again.

Step 5: Now fold each paper in half length-wise for the purpose of making a crease.

Step 6: Fold the top half over to that it lines up with the crease you made in step 5. You want the papers to be folded the opposite direction from each other.

Step 7: Fold each bottom half over to the side in the same way, but go the opposite direction.

(Love the little 3 year old hands helping me out!)

Step 8: Flip over each paper. Fold the ends in toward the center as shown.

Step 9: Lay the papers on top of each other as shown. You’ll want like sides to face each other.

Step 10: Fold the top right yellow point over and tuck the edge under the green as shown. The fold will be on the crease line that you see in the photo above.

Step 11: Fold up the bottom yellow point in the same way.

Step 12: Flip over the star and fold in the green points the same way.

Step 13: When you tuck in the final point, the star should hold together like this.

Fold some more! Then grab some markers and decorate your ninja stars.

Want to see video instructions? Click the play button to start the video.

Our collection of stars turned out so bright and colorful! And being paper, they don’t hurt too bad if people end up throwing them – not that that would ever happen at our house, HA!

23 Comments

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  1. ROSE May 27, 2017

    THANK YOU!I LOVED IT ,EVEN THOUGH IT WAS VERY HARD I DEFENTLY WANT TO MAKE MORE.MY BROTHER LOVES NINJAS AND NOW HE'SA PROPER NINJA!

    THANKS AGIAN

    ROSE

    AGE :8

    Reply
  2. Michelle from NZ May 28, 2017

    Cool! Thanks. My three boys love this.

    Reply
  3. Stacie May 29, 2017

    Excellent activity, thank you. We love origami and making toys from paper and I love the aspect of repeating the steps until we could get ut right. Thankyou for all the things you share :-)

    Reply
  4. CK May 30, 2017

    This worked out great. We used the astrobrights paper and glow in the dark glue. They work great out the yard when we set up the hula hoops as targets!

    Reply
    1. Sarah May 30, 2017

      That's a fantastic idea to use hula hoops for targets! We'll have to try that!

      Reply
      1. Munira Dec 2, 2020

        I don’t like ninjas that much but this sounds great!
        I think I’ll try it and see if it’s fun 🤔
        Great idea using hula hoops for targets
        I’ll have to try it out!

        Reply
  5. Tracy Sep 16, 2017

    Did this was my four-year-old. He tried but he just watched, he loved it !

    Reply
  6. Andrew Dec 28, 2017

    Still can't figure out how to do steps 9-13

    Reply
    1. Aunia May 21, 2018

      It through me too, but you need to fold the tips down not in... Then it's easy peasy.

      Reply
  7. Nate Jan 6, 2018

    It does work and I like it very much. This is a great project.

    Reply
    1. Koli Jan 17, 2018

      I agree thank you!

      Reply
  8. shawna dean May 11, 2018

    it worked for me!! It is super fun making them. I have made a ton!

    Reply
  9. John Aug 20, 2018

    Actually, you probably did it wrong, it works great!

    Reply
  10. Adam Weingart May 8, 2019

    Thank you so much! very fun to make.

    Reply
  11. Lovely Aug 29, 2019

    I love this! Thank you I just did them w my boys

    Reply
  12. Laura Edeen Oct 12, 2019

    I feel like a rockstar for being able to make these for my 7 year old! He’s obsessed as is everyone at school. Thank you!

    Reply
  13. Jamie Houghton Nov 22, 2019

    This was so cool, I’m going to make more and give them to friends and family as Christmas presents. Thank you so much for giving me the idea.

    Reply
  14. ian Mar 13, 2020

    I loved doing it with my kids!

    Reply
  15. Laura Mar 28, 2020

    Such a fun and simple craft! My six year old is having a brilliant time throwing his ninja stars about now, thank you!

    Reply
  16. rishan May 7, 2020

    It was a very good project.

    Reply
  17. Vaishanth Oct 10, 2020

    Thanks for this

    Reply
  18. Richard Oct 24, 2020

    It's so easy to remember the steps. And thanks to you, I made an even smaller version out of regular notebook paper. So, thanks alot.

    Reply
  19. Chris Oct 28, 2020

    I showed this to my 7 year old little sister, and she got the hang of it right away. I still can’t make them though, no matter how hard I try.

    Reply
  20. Ella Nov 1, 2020

    Very clear, I loved it!

    Reply
  21. Travis Nov 18, 2020

    i loved them it was awesome

    Reply
  22. Bev Jul 12, 2021

    I’m going to practice these I taught my grandchildren how to make the paper fortune tellers so I’m looking for things for boys

    Reply
  23. connor May 11, 2023

    this is such a fun project to do with my 6 year old boys! thank you!

    Reply

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