Easter Activities

For Easter this year, we painted Easter eggs (of the paper variety), we made some Easter bunny masks and played some bunny games. Mostly relay races with eggs. Unfortunately, it rained today so our games were brought inside. The kids had fun having permission to run in the house. : ) We tried to hold the eggs on spoons

and hopped like bunnies to deliver the eggs to a basket. 

Here's how we made our bunny mask, 

Cut a paper plate in half. 

Cut out a spot for the nose and eyes. 

Punch a hole on each side and tie yarn on each hole to be able tie it around the back of their head to stay on. 

Add a pink puff ball above the nose.

Add paper ears.

Here's how we made our painted eggs.

We spread some shaving cream into a shallow tray (a cookie sheet would also work for this).

Then we added a variety of paint colors

Using a skewer we marbled the paint by dragging it along the paint from top to bottom, then bottom to top. You could also try dragging it in swirl patterns, waves, whatever your imagination thinks would look pretty. 

Next we pressed a paper egg onto the swirled paint. We made sure to press down on all sides and parts of the egg so that paint got on every inch. Then pulled it out of the paint. 

We let the painted shaving cream sit on the eggs for a few minutes, then used a squeegee to scrap the excess off. 

After that you are left with a beautiful painted marble egg. 

Clear as mud? Feel free to ask if you have any questions!

Happy Easter and spring break everybody!

 

Paper Plate Easter Bunny

Here's an old picture I had of a project we did last year. It's simple and cute, and your kids will love it! For the ears, I used a little less than half the plate. Half looked a little too fat for my taste, so I just cut a thin section off the straight side of each ear. 

What You Need:

• 2 paper plates
• pink and black crayons or markers
• googly eyes
• white cotton balls
• small pink pompom
• bow tie - you can use paper or get fancy and use fabric

What You Do:

1. Color the inside of the ears pink.
2. Glue on the ears to the back of the full plate
3. Glue on the eyes and nose
4. Draw on the face
5. Glue on the bow tie

Easy peasy lemon squeezy!

P is for Platypus

So a platypus is one of those crazy, weird, yet interesting animals. It kind of makes me think that God was in a silly mood the day He made them. Even the name is kind of silly. Okay, pop quiz! Which of these facts are true about the platypus?

a. It consists of a beaver tail, duck bill, & otter feet.
b. When naturalists first discovered it, some thought it was a hoax.
c. It is venomous.
d. It is one of 5 egg laying mammals.
e. There is no universally used plural form of the word platypus. Both platypuses and platypi are acceptable.
f. All of the above.

F is correct! Isn't that crazy?

Of course this unique animal has gotten an extra measure of fame lately due to this amazing show, I'm sure you've heard of it.

We decided to study more about the platypus and make an Agent P Easter egg for letter P week. I mean his name is P and what is more perfect than that for letter P week?

We started at  the National Geographic Kids website and checked out their platypus creature feature page. It includes pictures, facts, a video, and a map of where they live. 

Then we made the Perry the platypus Easter egg from Family fun. The link to the craft is here.

Here's What You Need:

• Template printed from family fun
• bottle cap
• greenish blue egg (plastic or hard boiled)
• Glue dots

Here's What You Do:

1. Color and cut out the template. Make sure to draw the crisscrosses on his tail and a band on his hat.
2. Glue the feet and tail to the inside of the bottle cap. Bend the feet over the edge of the rim so they are pointing down. 
3. Glue the face and arms onto the egg. Wrap the hat around the top of the egg and glue the two back pieces together with a glue dot. Bend it so it sticks up.
4. Put your egg in the bottle cap to keep it upright.

We hope you have fun with your own weird, yet cool platypus egg. 

 

T is for texture

 I thought I had lost these pictures, but I found them so I figured this is better late than never right?! We made these during letter T week and also as an Easter activity.They are foam eggs with different textured materials on them. This activity would work with any shape, you could even do the letter T or F for feel.

Each egg was a sticky backed foam paper. We peeled off the sticky part to attach our textures:

Hard beads.

Soft pom poms. (These didn't stick very well, so we had to use glue.Next time I think I will use yard for soft.)

Bumpy shredded paper. 

 

Bobble Head Chicks & Nests

  These are some quirky little chicks that we made for Easter. You use egg cartons and wire to make these fun little friends that bobble their head whenever they move.  My daughter and I made one to test out the directions. When we were done I kind of didn't know what I thought, but then I saw that little head wobble and it brought a big smile to our faces.

Before we made our chicks and nests, we talked about baby animals being born in the spring and discussed how birds use lots of different materials to make nests for their chicks.  

Here is our chicky nesting outside in our homemade nest. 

Here is a picture of the head tilting so you can kind of see what makes the bobble bob. 

To go along with our bobble head chicks, we made them nests to roost in until they learn to fly.

With my older class, I assembled most of the chick and the kids added eyes and feathers. It took a while to make 9 of those cuties so I decided to simplify with the younger class.** The kids made the nests for their birds and I provided them with these cute little toy chicks to inhabit their nest. 

**Making this with one or two kids isn't a big deal, but doing it on a large scale was a little more tricky. I wouldn't suggest doing this with more than two or three kids at a time unless the kids are older. 

Want to make your own chick or nest? 

Bobble Head Chick

Here's What You Need:

2 cardboard egg carton cups

paint

feathers

card stock

googly eyes

tape

24 mm gauge craft wire (It has to be this gauge to make the bobble work correctly)

Here's What You Do:

1. Cut one of the egg carton cups so it sits flat.
2. Cut the second cup to a height of about 3/4 inch. 
3. Paint the cups and let them dry.
4. Cut out feet and beak from card stock and glue or tape them inside the cups. Glue the eyes on. 
5. Wrap 6 inches of wire around a pen. 
6. Use a push pin to make a hole in  the top of the larger cup.
7. Insert a full circle of wire into the hole and tape to the top of the cup.
8. Tape another circle of coil into the top of the smaller cup. 
9. Glue on feathers.

Homemade Bird Nests

Here's What You Need:

brown paper bag

straw, yarn, leaves, twigs or other things to add to your nest

Here's What You Do:

1. Roll the paper bag inside itself and keep rolling down until you reach the bottom. Squish and squeeze the sides until the bag resembles a nest shape.
2. Glue on yarn, twigs, sticks, straw, etc to make your nest soft for your new chick. 

Ideas were originally found from Family Fun magazine. 

Holiday Necklace

Here is one of the fun crafts we made at our Halloween party this year.

This necklace could be used for a lot of holidays - hearts for Valentine's Day, clovers for St. Patrick's Day, eggs for Easter, Christmas shapes, etc.

I had one of our fabulous moms cut out 5 Halloween shapes (skull, bat, pumpkin, ghost, and witch's hat) using her silhouette machine. Each shape was about 3 inches across, except the bat was a little longer. I used a mini hole punch to make the holes because I didn't want them to swing as much as if I had used a regular hole punch. (You can find mini hole punches at places like Michael's.) Now that I think about it, you could probably cut the hole with the silhouette if you add it to the image.

Anyway, a fun and easy Halloween necklace is a great way to celebrate!

Here's What You Need

• Halloween shapes (or other shapes if doing a different holiday)
• Straws cut into 1 inch pieces
• Necklace string or chords (I used braiding chords found at Walmart)

Here's What You Do

1. Put 6 straw pieces on the string. (A great way to stop the pieces from sliding off is to tie one end to a pencil with a lose knot.)
2. Put on one of the shapes then a straw piece.
3. Repeat step 2 until you have used all the shapes.
4. End with 6 straw pieces up the other side.
5. Tie it off and enjoy!

Happy Easter!

As part of our Easter party, we made Easter bunny masks. After we made our masks can you guess what we did? We learned the bunny hop! (At least a simplified version.)

Here's What You Need:

• Two white paper plates
• Pink markers
  
• Scissors
• Stapler
• Hole Punch
• Elastic or yarn

Here's What You Do:

1. Cut the two plates in half. You will need 3 of the 4 halves.
   
2. Color the inside of two of the halves pink.
3. Cut a nose "hole" and two eye holes in one of the other halves and punch two holes on the sides of the plate. It is good to position the holes on the lower half of the plate, but not too close to the bottom.
4. Draw on a nose and whiskers.
5. Staple on ears.
   
6. If using elastic, tie a strip through both holes to wear around the head. If using yarn, cut two lengths and tie one in each hole. When the child wears the mask you can tie the two pieces of yarn in a bow behind their head.