Easter Messy Play & Crafting

We have been having a great Easter holidays so far, its been so nice having the nice dry weather. We have held 2 group messy play sessions, been catching up with friends and attended a Gromit model making session. The boys had great fun learning to make a Gromit, with George from Ardman animations. I was hoping that Joseph (5) would be able to make his own but he did need lots of help, so I ended up making most of both!

On Monday we held an Easter themed group messy play session, where we made bunny grass cups, and Easter bonnets/hats. To make the hats cut a strip of card to fit your child's head then cut out and staple on some bunny ears on top.

I didn't get chance to share the Easter bonnets I made the boys last year, I was inspired to make Joseph's angry bird hat by this chick hat I found on pintrest.

Back to the messy play session.... We had an easter sensory box with rainbow rice in the base, & in the other box I used cooked seed pearl tapioca. I was hoping the tapioca would be like water beads but its more sticky, but still lots of fun.

In one of our pools we had cornflakes and fake flowers. In the other pool we had lots of pom poms and we painted and labeled egg boxes so the children could match the colours, they also had the option to use child's chopsticks for some fine motor practice.

We also had a table set out with Easter colouring sheets (lots on my easter pintrest board) and play dough and laminated play dough mats.The kids had lots of my funky crayon miss-shapes to colour with...

On the floor we had a large sheet of paper for painting, using brushes & stamps. We also used a potato masher as i'd seen on pinteset it maks a great egg shape! The other tip I found on pintrest is to use a sponge in the bowl it applies an even coat of paint to the stamp to make it easier to get a good print.

It was a very busy and fun session, so much so I didn't get chance to take many pictures!

If your looking for more Easter fun take a look at these posts from last year...

E is for Easter... Last years Easter round up!

Easter Chick Farm Sensory Box

Paper Plate Lamb/Sheep (pic is right at the bottom of the post)

The second messy play session we held was Lego Movie themed & I promise to share all the details soon. We are going away for the second week of the holidays, down in Dorset, fossil hunting. So I will apologise now if I go AWOL until after The Easter weekend & hope you all have a lovely Easter whatever your up to. 

x Jo x

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Easter Bunny Grass Cup

I'm busy getting ready for another couple of group messy play sessions I'm holding this Easter holidays. One of the crafts we will be making is these cute Bunny Cups that are great on their own but even better with grass hair!

Daniel (3.5) helped me make this test/example bunny, if you'd like to make one too here are the instructions.

E is for ... Easter

E is for Easter, Egg, & Elephant!

We've had lots of fun this week:

Decorating Eggs & Huggers

Small World Play

Egg Collage

We turned our collage eggs & other eggs that I cut out from the boys paintings & drawings in to this Easter display. I used blue tack to attach them along our floating shelf that we have in the kitchen. As we don't have a fire place this shelf is effectively our mantle where we display cards etc. & above is where we display the boys artwork.

We used our pom pom magnets again this week with an egg print out from 3 Dinosaurs Easter Pack, I have also printed out some other ages from their spring pack which we will probably complete over the Easter weekend.

 We have also been using these Easter colouring sheets, I was very impressed by Josephs (4) kisses (top left).

Joseph also had his first go at colouring by numbers, he has done this on the PC & tablet before but not on paper. We used a sheet from Confessions of a Homescholer's letter of the week curriculum.

 I explained to Joseph that he needed to look at the numbers next to the colour & find it on the picture & colour it using that colour pen. I then turned my attention to Daniel (2.5), when I turned back around, Joseph had used a line to link all the colours up to the relevant part of the picture, before colouring it.

When printing most of our work sheets I tend to use the draft option when printing, which uses much less ink, when printing colours this does make them very pale & in this case made red pink & brown orange. So I used our felt pens to colour over the printed squares, this worked really well as it meant that they were all the same shades as the pens we have.

When I picked up the boys polystyrene eggs I got a slightly larger one for myself. I'd seen several ideas on Pintrest, but didn't pin any of them so cant give credit oops! I used a selection of buttons from my stash, some new & some upcycled. I used some cheap coloured pins to attach the buttons on to my egg & another pin to attach some ribbon at the top. I'm pleased with the effect however its not quite as good as I was expecting! It was however nice to do some crafting just for me, as I'm usually making & sewing for the boys or to sell.

We still have our Easter bonnets to make but as the boys haven't been feeling to well & Daddy has now gone down with man flu, I thought I had better put this post together before I go down with it! I hope you all have a great Easter with your families & if you are looking for some more Easter ideas take a look at my Pintrest board.

x Jo x

Easter Chick Farm

Continuing our letter E week, we made a Easter chick farm (named by Joseph (4)).  The boys helped me gather & make this box so it was hard to get a pic before they started playing.

      We used: 

• Wood shavings for the base
• Brown plastic mushroom container for the hill
• Lots of yellow chicks
• Chickens from our Fisher Price Farm
• Fencing from our small farm
• Plastic eggs - from kinder eggs
• Bouncy eggs (they were dinosaur eggs last week)
• Egg boxes
• Shredded yellow paper
• A couple of ladybirds that wanted in on the action!

They totally loved this sensory small world box, they loved playing with the wood shavings! I'm really not keen on the wood shavings as they made such a mess!

My kitchen floor afterwards!

x Jo x

Egg Decorating & Huggers

We decided to get our entry's ready for the decorated egg competition, held at our local Easter party. I picked up some polystyrene eggs from a local stationary shop, however they are available from most craft shops & have been seen in the £ shops. 

We used the left over tissue paper from our Easter Egg Collages, to decorate them. First we covered the egg in white glue then added tissue & more glue until the egg was all covered. I did have to help them at the end by putting on some more glue to stick all the tissue down. They took approximately a day to dry (I turned them 1/2 way through), we dried these on a plastic bag so they wouldn't stick.

We made some really cute egg huggers using free printables from:

• Bunny Egg Hugger - Skip to my lou
• Chick Egg Hugger - Pixel Occasions (Link to free b/w printable is at the bottom of the post)

I printed them on to cream/white card & cut them out for the boys. They then coloured them in & added eyes (always a hit). I stapled them together for the boys & we added some shredded tissue & our dry egg.

x Jo x

Easter Egg Collage

We have finally moved on the letter E, which is good timing for Easter! So we started off with some easter egg collages inspired by this post that I pinned. Joseph (4) & I cut up lots of coloured scrap paper, card & tissue. The boys used white glue to stick them on. I did say that it was going to make Easter eggs & Daniels even looks egg shaped.

 Once dry I made an egg shaped template & drew arond it on the back & cut them out. I really like how colourfull they are & the crisp lines, created by cutting the egg shape afterwards.

 Similar to when we made our valentines heart display, I used some of the boys random pictures from toddler group to make some more eggs.

I'm not sure where we are going to display these eggs, possibly a banner? 

We have lots more easter crafts planned, including some boys bonnets. 

For more craft ideas why not check out my Easter & Spring pintrest board.

x Jo x

Easter Egg Hunt

As we wont be having our 2013 hunt until Easter day, I thought I would share some pics of last years hunt. As the weather wasn't great we decided to go for an indoor hunt on the upper floors of our house (its split level so we have 4 floors total). I'd picked up a kit on sale which included baskets, some signs & arrows. The arrows worked great as Joesph was only 3.5 then so would have needed help otherwise. We hid 2 small eggs in each hiding place one for each of the boys, as Joseph knew what he was doing, he was finding the eggs, then sharing with Daniel (not quite 2 then).

This year I plan to use some clues like these at Making Boys Men I love how she has used pictures as well as words! I'm also hoping for better weather so we can use the garden.

We also attend an annual Easter party with bonnet & decorated egg competitions.

Last years Easter bonnets, we didn't win!

Whilst looking for these pictures from last Easter I found these cute pictures from a visit to the pets corner at a local farm park. I love looking back at pictures of the boys, you can really see how much they have grown!

I hope you have a great Easter with your family this year, we will be sharing some Easter crafts soon, so pop back. If you are looking for some inspiration in the meantime take a look at my Easter Pintrest board.

x Jo x

I'm linking up to the Easter Crafts Spring Project Linkup