Minion Eggs

So, I got ridiculously into Easter this year. So much so that I went completely overboard when it came to buying Eastery paraphernalia for the house, Easter gifts for the children's Easter baskets, Easter eggs/chocolate (even though I was adamant the children would NOT be getting eggs from us this year) and Easter egg hunt-related things. At the last count, I think I bought a total of 60 plastic eggs and, looking back on this now in hindsight, this was a completely ridiculous overestimation of the number I needed, particularly considering the fact we weren't intending on hosting an Easter egg hunt with lots of children and our youngest child wasn't old enough to 'hunt' eggs or eat/enjoy the treasures inside. So, let me repeat - 60, yes that's 60 plastic eggs for a one-person treasure hunt. Major miscalculation. Big. Fat. Oops. Oh well. At least they're both cheap, re-usable and useful for a variety of purposes. I do love these little plastic eggs - they're so bright and colourful and I'll be sure to use them regularly in our play and learning.

We had a particularly wet bank holiday weekend (aren't they all?!) so I searched Pinterest for a craft activity we could do that wouldn't involve a trip to the shops to buy craft supplies and I stumbled upon this.

These are so quick and easy to make and a must for any Minion/Despicable Me fan. All you need to make them is black tape, googly eyes, yellow and blue plastic eggs and a sharpie/thin permanent marker.

Start by pushing together half a yellow egg with half a blue egg (it works best if the blue part is the smaller part). Then cut a stripe of tape in half lengthways and carefully wind it halfway up on the yellow part of the egg. Stick googly eyes onto the tape (we used self-adhesive eyes to make it easer). Then add detail (mouths, dungarees, hair, eyebrows etc.) with the sharpie. You could find pictures of various Minions to draw inspiration from or just create your own as we did.

Playdough Easter eggs

So I've got a little behind in terms of blogging lately. Firstly, because I've been faaaaaaar too busy enjoying the Easter holidays with the children (and rightly so!) and secondly, because I've had some pretty terrible news over the last couple of weeks so I've either preoccupied or not in the right frame of mind to blog. Anyway, enough about that. I thought I'd share with you another of our Easter activities (yes, I know Easter's happened, it's all over, despite there still being a mountain of leftover Easter eggs yet to be eaten). It might just give you an idea of something you could do NEXT year though - I know we'll be doing this one again, that's for sure.

We made these playdough Easter eggs using playdough (obviously), sequins and beads, buttons, coloured matchsticks, lollipop sticks and pipe cleaners. You could use anything really that will stick into or make an indentation in the playdough - bits of pasta would even work.

Despite us only using a few items, Tommy managed to create some really interesting, creative and varied designs.

 

Potato Masher Easter Egg Printing

I hope everyone's been enjoying the almost summer-like weather we've been having recently. We have definitely been making the most of it! Whilst it's been sunny and warm, we've snapped up the opportunity to do some outdoor crafting. One of the activities we did recently was printing Easter eggs using a potato masher. This was so easy, quick and, most important of all, FUN!

To make our prints, we used a potato masher (it's important to find the plastic variety, which we didn't find as easy as I had hoped!), some ready-mixed paint and some white card. I tend to make things as easy as possible for myself in terms of setting up/clearing away with craft activities - I find this is particularly important when you have a younger child like we do and they're likely to need feeding/cuddling/changing etc. half way through or just as you finish. With this in mind, I often use cheap paper plates as paint palettes (it saves on the washing up!). I squirted a small splash of different-coloured paint onto the paper plates and made sure the colours overlapped a little. I also taped the card down to a tablecover, so they wouldn't blow away mid activity (yes, this has happened to us before!).

Tommy then got to work, dipping the potato masher in the paint and pressing it onto the paper and lifting it off carefully. He really loved this activity, so much so I had to go and seek out some more
paper, so that he could continue!

The technique is really effective and would make lovely simple Easter cards. Alternatively, individual eggs could be cut out to make decorations.

Bird's Nest Craft

We've been well and truly throwing ourselves into Easter crafts recently. Tommy has really started to get into creative activities over the last few months, which, as a teacher, I really take pleasure in seeing. We tried this activity today. It was really simple and quick to make and the finished product is so cute!

To make it, you'll need: several pipe cleaners cut up into short sections; small strips of foam; small strands of wool; yellow card circles; googly eyes and orange card triangles; several feathers in various colours; a large semi-circle cut out of card.

To make our nest, we glued the strips of wool, pipe cleaners and foam onto the card semi-circle. Next, we added the yellow card circles to make chicks. To finish our chicks, we added eyes, beaks and some brightly-coloured feathers.

I told you it was cute! Why not give it a go this Easter? 

Toddler/preschooler Easter basket

I recently shared Isla's Easter basket with you and now here's Tommy's. This is the first time I've made a basket of gifts for Tommy. We don't usually make a big thing of Easter and I don't think we've actually even bought him an Easter egg before. We're not killjoys or anything like that - it's just he usually ends up with loads of them so we haven't ever needed to buy him one. Instead we've bought Tommy a toy or special treat of some kind. This year we thought we'd start a new tradition of making up Easter baskets for our children. I've been searching for suitable items to go in them for a while now.

Although I LOVE chocolate and Tommy does too, I didn't want to just buy him a truckload of sugary, sweet treats. We try to encourage him to eat healthily and don't allow him too much in the way of sweets, biscuits and chocolate and I don't see why this should change just because it's Easter. With this in mind, I decided to try and find lots of items that would encourage us to spend quality time together instead by crafting, baking and getting creative. 

First of all, I bought lots of Easter-themed books. Books can be expensive but these were far from it. I bought these from The Works' which is fab for cheap books and craft activities and supplies, and these were on offer at 4 for £5. BARGAIN! I also purchased 'Peppa's Easter Egg Hunt' from Amazon.

Tommy loves getting crafty and baking, so when I saw these i couldn't resist. I bought a Pom pom crafts activity pack, Easter-themed colouring book and cookie-making set from Tesco. If you haven't done so already, check out Tesco's extensive Easter range - they had sooooooo many great things in there, it was a struggle to decide what to buy!

I also included a Happy Easter stake from Home Bargains, as this could be used for an Easter Egg hunt or as a signpost for the Easter bunny. I bought this super cute clockwork rabbit from Wilkinsons, a cheeping chick from a Tesco and a super cute Easter decorations craft pack from the Card Factory, which also had a great selection of cheap Easter gifts.

I picked up this rabbit bubble wand from Tesco, a chick biscuit and Easter egg moulds from Home Bargains and two Malteaser rabbits.

There are so many possibilities for what you might include in a young child's Easter basket and I hope this post has given you some ideas. I'd love to hear any ideas you have for Easter basket gifts. 

Happy Easter to you all! 

Playdough Easter Chicks

We haven't really done very much in the way of Spring/Easter crafting so far this year so I thought it was about time we started! I set up this playdough activity for Tommy to do after nursery and he spent ages doing it.

To make our Spring chicks, we used a variety of materials: one quantity of yellow playdough; an assortment of buttons; a range of googly eyes; orange pipe cleaners; different-coloured feathers and some beaks cut out of card.

I was impressed with the range of different chicks Tommy created during this activity. He really showed a lot of imagination.