Easter Craft Round-up

If you're like me, you're wondering how on earth Easter is this Sunday?! So here are some simple and festive crafts that you can pull together this week for your kids:

🌷DIY Daffodils from Mend & Make New.

🌷Easter Bunny Bookmarks from Easy, Peasy, and Fun

🌷Easter Egg Pom Pom Poppers from Teach Beside Me

Easter Tomb Biscuits by Katie's Crochet Goodies

Here's some of my own previous crafts for Easter:

🌷My FAVORITE: Snowflake Eggs (Hazel and Charlotte are so small in this post!)

🌷Egg Families & Easter Lilies

🌷The Real Meaning of Easter

🌷Alphabet Eggs

This is a great use of all those leftover plastic eggs you'll be stepping on 

in the middle of the night after Easter!

Also, I found this book at Costco and I love it:

You can find it HERE.

Happy Easter Week. 

Easter Gifts for Kids

Twelve days until Easter! Weird, right?

One of our family traditions for Easter is to get our children new books. This year I'm trying to find books that coordinate with their yearly goals (also, a sneaky way of reminding them that of said goals). I will post about my book choices soon, because I'm still deciding, but I wanted to share some ideas for Easter baskets first.

/1/ Wooden Bunny Puzzle. Also THIS one is cute.

/2/ Children's Harmonica. (Kids of any age can have fun with a harmonica!)

/3/ Painted Egg Shakers

/4/ Crayon Rocks

/5/ Wooden Stacking Bunny

/6/ Cata Pencil

/7/ Smencils

/8/ Personalized Buttons from Social Prints

/9/ Egg Chalk

/1/ Mini Perplexus

/2/ Cat Sunglasses

/3/ Balance Bird (Have you tried these? So cool. They also balance on your kid's nose FYI.)

/4/ Giant Gummy Bear (Cause, c'mon. It's HUGE)

/5/ Bath Bombs (I also love the ones with toys inside!)

/6/ Bunny Socks

/7/ Lekue Stackable Popsicle Makers

/8/ Wood Intellegence Tetris Puzzle

What are your Easter gift traditions?

The Real Meaning of Easter: The Empty Tomb

As far as our preparations for the real meaning of Easter, we've been doing a small "devotional" each night during this week leading up to Easter. I really enjoyed Saren Loosli's article on Power of Moms titled, A Deliberate Mother's Guide to a Christ-Centered Easter. I've followed most of her suggestions, simplifying where needed so that it's age appropriate for my kids. We've read about Jesus' triumphal entry into Jerusalem, his miracles and acts of love, the last supper, Gethsemane, and today we read about his death and burial. We've ended each devotional by watching a short clip from Bible videos such as The Lamb of God and Finding Faith in Christ. 

It has brought such a spirit into our home as we've studied our Savior and talked about why He did what He did. My testimony has been strengthened tremendously this Easter and I've seen how a little bit of effort to turn our hearts to the Savior brings great dividends.

Of course our children aren't still or quiet while we read the scriptures and try to teach them about the life and Atonement of the Savior. But they are listening. I know this because on Thursday night we were setting the table quietly with lit candles, preparing to talk about the Last Supper. I put my oldest, Hazel, in charge of napkins and when I sat down, I saw this. She told me it was Christ's empty tomb.
I tucked mine away in my journal as a sweet reminder of this five-year old's understanding that Easter is more than bunnies and candy eggs.

Hope your weekend is special and fun and most of all, meaningful.

Easter Activities for Toddlers and Preschoolers: Snowflake Eggs

Well here's a fun Easter idea, even though we are drawing close to the big day! I came upon these snowflake eggs a while ago and was excited to try them out. Turns out they are quick and easy and a little bit addicting.

Take a regular sheet of construction paper and fold it once lengthwise and once again widthwise (isn't that a word?) Then hold the folded side in your hand (left and bottom are folded) and cut a rounded edge on the open sides (top and right).

 Draw shapes and designs easy enough for your little ones to cut themselves, if you trust them with scissors that is!

 My favorite part is opening it up at the end...

 We egged our door and then mailed these beauties to grandparents with a handwritten "Hoppy Easter" from Hazel.

Happy Good Friday!

Easter Activities for Toddlers and Preschoolers: Alphabet Eggs

Here's a fun idea for something to do with all of those plastic Easter eggs you've been pulling out of the Easter bin in preparation for Sunday...

Uppercase and lowercase letter matching! (Found all over pinterest.)

  I wrote upper case letters on the top half and lower case on the bottom half of the eggs for my four year old to work on.

 I gave her a large crate to hold (most) of the eggs as she matched them up.

This next game was for my two year old who has been obsessed with the guessing game where you ask someone which hand you're hiding something in.  So I hid a tiny bunny in one of these orange eggs and asked her to guess which egg had the bunny. It was a hit for at least twenty rounds...

Once she found the bunny, I'd put it back into its egg and mix them up really fast in front of her until she had no idea again where he was hiding. My four year old loved this one as well.

We also tried a matching game where I hid two cotton balls, two paper clips, two pennies, etc into the eggs. We took turns opening two eggs to see if we found a match, which got a little hairy with two little ones who were anxious to open those babies up!

Tomorrow I'll be posting some of the ways we've been teaching and celebrating the spiritual side of Easter. There's a lot of good ideas out there... as well as some crazy complicated daily devotional egg-opening object-lessoning overwhelming stuff, so my goal is to keep it siiiiimple and focus on the Savior. Check back.

Oh and my mom mailed this to me and I'm pretty sure this was written just. about. me. Especially during this difficult month of March when winter is lingering and my goals are biting at my heels...

Four days til Easter!

Easter Activities for Toddlers and Preschoolers

I wanted to post some great crafts for St. Patrick's Day, but we ended up keeping it pretty simple around here. I traced the hands of everyone in our family onto paper in various colors and had the girls cut them out and tape them onto our walls in the shape of a rainbow.  I was planning on making a small "pot" for the end of our rainbow where we could leave love notes or small surprises for each other, but I never got that far. I did leave my little treats for the kids on the floor next to the rainbow on St. Patty's Day morning if that counts...

And now it's on to Easter! 

We dove right in this week with some Easter/Spring activities that coincided 

with our study of the letter C. Here's a new favorite:

Easter Bunny Carrot Cups

Materials:
paper or plastic cups

soil

carrot seeds

white and pink construction paper

scissors

glue

googly eyes

marker

I drew a quick pattern for the ears so the kids could put their mad scissor skills to use...

My poor Charlotte was stuck with mommy's big scissors until the little ones were free (I swear we own six pairs of little scissors, but they've disappeared along with half of our forks and all of my tape...)

We used white for the outside and pink for the inside of our bunny ears.

Glue them together...

And glue them into the inside of your cup. You might need to reinforce with tape.

Next step, googly eyes!

I asked the kids to draw a nose, mouth and whiskers for their bunnies.

Our little friend Timothy was my hand model today. I'm sure he was so confused as to why I was having him hold these seeds so still...

Time to plant your seeds! We went out back and got some mud from our garden (since it was actually snowing/sleeting here today) for our cups and planted 2-3 seeds per cup, just to be sure one of those suckers with grow!

I think it will be so fun to see some green come out of the top of these bunny cups and transfer them to our garden once they're too big for the cups.

I love how Charlotte decided to draw herself instead of a bunny face on hers, on the left. We added a little ruffle for a touch of femininity...

Here's to hoping for spring! Here's one of my favorite books that goes along beautifully with this activity:

Easter Festivities

We've been getting ready for Easter this week with these fun (and relatively simple) Easter activities:


Egg Families: We found this idea on Family Fun and my four year old followed their picture to the "T" while my three year old made up her own. I love these activities that are adaptable to various ages.

Materials:

hard-boiled eggs

markers

yarn

ribbon

toilet paper roll

We boiled our eggs and let them cool before drawing their faces on with markers.

We cut toilet paper holders into smaller sections and covered them in paper "dresses."
Hazel followed the picture on Family Fun to the "T" and made a bib, a dress with a ribbon, a bonnet and curly hair. I only helped a little with the hair. She's so crafty.

 

Easter Lilies: 

Also from Family Fun, this craft makes a cute gift for moms and grandmas on Easter Sunday.

 

Materials:

white card stock

pencil

green construction paper

yellow pipe cleaner

tape

green straw

hole punch

scissors

We're visiting family this week for Easter and didn't have straws or pipe cleaners on hand, so we used a paint brush for the stem and yellow construction paper for the stamen.

 Trace your child's hand on white card stock and cut it out. Roll the fingers with a pencil so they fold out like lily petals.

Wrap the hand around the straw (or paintbrush) and tape into place. Cut two double leaves out from the green paper and punch a hole in the center where they meet. Slide onto the straw under the flower and tape into place. Fold half of the pipe cleaner in half and curl the ends down, then place it into the end of the straw.

Isn't she adorable? Oh my goodness.

I hope you all have a lovely Easter weekend!We'll continue with more Letter of the Week and some nice SPRING activities next week.I can't wait for warmer weather.

Spring Activities for Preschoolers: Little Love Birds

So today was a perfect example of why I started this blog. I wanted to come up with a service activity that we could do as a family this Easter, to keep it more Christ-centered. I found these little birds and thought we could make them for a local children's center called the Christmas Box House. I called the shelter and they told me that they currently had five children at their shelter, so our plan was to make five of these "love" birds (to show the kids how loved they are) with hand-written notes from my girls. Sounds simple enough right? And if I were to post the pictures of my girls making these birds, writing their notes, and taking this basket of love birds to the shelter, it just might have passed for a perfectly planned activity that was a great success.

Fledgling Friends from Family Fun

But the point of this blog is NOT to make activities like this look easy! Let me just pull the curtain and reveal the back stage realities of this activity. The birds were delivered with love, but not without a few little mishaps along the way. Everything started out so well. We had a lesson on the Easter story and the Resurrection. We talked about how we want to remember the Savior this Easter by doing service. We made the birds, wrote the notes, and all was on track. Then, right before we left, my three year old started crying because her love bird's wings were uneven. She refused to eat dinner and when she started telling my husband and I that she'd never be our daughter again, she was put in time-out.

(She chucked pieces of her magnetic calendar out from under her door one by one... and her underwear. She knows that really ticks me off.)

Once she calmed down enough to come downstairs and get in the car, we were on our way. Then my sweet little girl (same one) lost it again. Her little sister got to choose what movie was on in the car, and that was pure injustice. To give her credit, she had stayed up late with the babysitter the night before and needed to call it a day, but our goal was to DELIVER THE GOODS. We pressed forward. Once we arrived at the shelter, Hazel (over-tired 3 yr old) offered to carry the bag of candy. I should have known that that was a bad idea. Once she realized that after her behavior that evening she wasn't getting one bite of that candy, she started pouting again...

We did deliver the basket of love birds and candy and wished everyone a Happy Easter. We speedily drove home while our precious girl (yep, same one) cried about not getting the biggest carrot in the snack bag. She was sound asleep within 30 minutes of returning home and we are left with HOPE for a brighter, more sane tomorrow...and the age of 4. (I hear it's better than 3).

Easter Love Birds

Materials:

Styrofoam balls in 2 different sizes

soft fuzzy yarn

toothpicks

tacky glue

scissors

feathers

black ball-head straight pins

Step One:

Stick a toothpick into the smaller Styrofoam ball and drizzle the ball in glue. Wrap yarn around the ball, starting at the end and working towards the middle. Cut the yarn, move the toothpick to the opposite end, and wrap the remainder of the ball in yarn, again working toward the middle. Repeat with larger ball.

Step Two:

To put the bird together, press a glue-tipped toothpick into the end of the smaller ball, dap the other end of the toothpick with glue and connect it to the bigger ball (one is the head and one is the body...in case you weren't following). Use toothpicks to poke four holes into the larger ball (2 for wings, 2 for legs).

(My husband is the lovely hand model here)

Step Three:

For the legs, bend the end of a pipe cleaner into four zig zags and pinch them together in two's (for little toes). Trim the legs to about 1 1/2 inches and insert them into the holes with glue on the tips of the pipe cleaners.

Step Four:
Insert wings into the other holes you made in the body. Trim the feathers if needed to make them the same length.

Step Five:

For the beak, cut a triangle from a piece of folded orange felt and bead glue along the outside of the crease. Press into place on the face and add two straight pins for eyes.

Step Six:
My girls drew pictures and wrote "Happy Easter" on little notes with John 3:16, "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting life."

Happy Easter!