The Easter bunny is coming THIS weekend! Get ready for a hopping celebration by making your very own bunny ears!

Supplies:

• Construction paper in white and pink
• Scissors
• Glue
• Stapler

Directions:

• Glue the ears onto a long strip of construction paper, measure to fit your child’s head, and staple the ends together to form a headband.
• Use white and pink construction paper to cut out bunny-ear shapes: two white and two pink, the pink being slightly smaller.
• Glue the pink ears onto the white ears.

Easter is just around the corner, time to decorate so a certain bunny knows how to find your house! With just three ingredients you can make these salt dough egg ornaments and let your kids decorate them!

Ingredients for Salt Dough:

• 4 cups all purpose flour
• 1 cup salt
• 1.5 cups warm water

Directions:

• Preheat your oven to 250 degrees Fahrenheit.
• Combine all of your ingredients and knead for 10 minutes. If your dough is too dry add a little bit more water in and continue to knead.
• Roll out the dough to a thickness that you’d like your salt dough ornament to be.
• Cut out eggs (if you have a cookie cutter great, otherwise just use a knife and do your best!)
• Using a straw, make a hole in the top for where you want to hang your salt dough ornament.
• Bake for 1-2 hours. If your ornaments are still doughy, put back in for another hour. (It will depend on your thickness how long you need to bake for. The thinner ornaments will take less time but thicker may take more).
• Once cool, you can decorate! Use paints, glitter, glue on materials, whatever you have, get creative!

It may be tricky to get your hands on a bouquet of flowers these days but you can still make one! Brighten up this spring day with these easy egg carton flowers!

Supplies:

• Paint
• Egg carton
• straws (substitute sticks from outside or pipe cleaners if you don’t have straws)
• Pom poms (substitute acorns, pennies—anything round!)
• Scissors
• Glue

Directions:

1. Adults, cut out four containers out of the egg carton. Trim around the edges so that it gives it a rounder shape for the petals of the flower.
2. Squirt some paint colors onto a paper plate and have the kids paint their flowers. Use any colors you’d like. If you are using something other than a pom pom for your center, you may want to paint that too.
3. After the paint’s dried you can attach the stem of the flower by gluing it to the back.
4. Next choose a colored pom pom and glue that to the center of the painted egg carton
5. Decide where to display your new flowers!

Decorate your Easter eggs with colorful pasta! This craft is not only fun, it’s super easy, so your little ones can do most of the work. Every egg SHOULD be different, so get creative, there’s no way to decorate wrong 🙂

Decorate your Easter eggs with colorful pasta! This craft is not only fun, it’s super easy, so your little ones can do most of the work. Every egg SHOULD be different, so get creative, there’s no way to decorate wrong 🙂

Supplies:

• Cardboard or paper for eggs
• paint or markers
• pasta- penne, fusili, etc
• glue

Directions:

• You can either paint the pasta all together in advance or let your kids color in the pasta with markers piece by piece. If you choose to paint the pasta, put it into different zippered bags and then put different color paint in with each bag. Squish pasta around in bag to coat. Lay out to dry.

Use the template below to trace and cut out your eggs—if you have it, use cardboard to create a sturdier egg.

Paint or color your eggs. You can keep them all one color, or create designs. Use the templates below (they can be glued onto your cardboard) or create your very own designs.

If you used paint, let your eggs dry.

Glue on your pasta!

Today we are going to create our very own Starry Night. Show your child a picture of Van Gogh’s painting for inspiration! Don’t forget to send in your masterpiece to be showcased in our art show! [email protected]

Supplies:

• A piece of cardboard (guessing we all have some delivery boxes laying around lately!)
• Foil
• Tape
• Q Tips (you can also use small cars or trucks to drive through the paint)
• Paint (you can stick to just a few shades of blue and a white or add in yellow and black to try and recreate Starry Night)
• Plate or other surface to put your paint on

Directions:

• Wrap tin foil around your cardboard and tape it down.
• Put your different paint colors onto your plate
• Time paint! Dip your Q Tip or truck into the paint and move it around the tin foil

Supplies:

• 1 sheet of bright paper 11″ x 14″ for the background
• 2 5.5″x 7″ rectangles of bright paper (different colors than your background)
• 4 5.5″x 7″ rectangles of bright paper (assorted brights so that the hands cut from these papers are different than the backgrounds)
• Pencil
• Scissors
• Glue stick
• Black paint
• Paper plate or alternative option to hold paint

Directions:

1. Select one 11″ x 14″ piece of bright paper for their background. In the above image, the background piece is yellow.
2. Then select two rectangles (5.5″ x 7″ each) these needed to be different than their background paper. Glue down to the background so that it appeared the background is divided into four sections. For a reference, in the photo, we used a blue and a green rectangle, allowing yellow background color to show in other areas.
3. Stack four rectangles (each 5.5″ x 7″) of assorted colors (you can staple or clip them together so they hold) and trace your hand onto the stack. Cut through all four at once with scissors to create four identical hand shapes.
4. Remove the staples or clip, arrange onto the background and glue down using the glue stick. Glue the fingers down well so they don’t curl off of the page.
5. Put some black paint onto a paper plate and lay your hand in it and then stamp onto each hand glued to your project.

Don’t forget to send in your final project to have it featured in our art show at the end of the week! [email protected]

Playdough can provide endless hours of fun for tiny hands, take the activity one step further and make your own! Add smells and colors for more sensory fun!

Ingredients:

How To:

1. Mix wet ingredients in a separate bowl. This is where you can add some extracts for a fun smell like vanilla, peppermint, banana, orange or strawberry. You can also add food coloring of your choice in this step.
2. Mix dry and wet ingredients together well and try to get all the lumps out.
3. Cook 1 minute in microwave safe bowl, stir well and do this 3X
4. Spread a small amount of flour on table or counter, remove playdough from the bowl and knead. (be careful it will be hot!)
5. Play!

Cooking can be a fun and relaxing time for some people, including your children. And your cooking can not only be fun for all but can have many benefits as well.

1. Mathematics benefits: Measuring, learning about quantity and volume, exploring numbers, learning geometric concepts of shape, size, position, and direction are all integral parts of cooking.
2. Science Benefits: They ask scientific questions, planning and conducting investigations, gathering data, and communicating findings
3. Social Studies Benefits: Identifying problems, gathering information, analyzing information, and drawing conclusions
4. Fine Motor Development: Great at using the small muscles in the hand as well as refining hand-eye coordination; such as an eggbeater to beat eggs

One example of a great cooking activity to do with your children is baking a banana bread, not only will it be fun the end result will be DELICIOUS! Thanks for the recipe Miss Christina!

Supplies:

• Clear cup or glass
• Shaving cream
• Food coloring
• Water

Instructions:

• Fill a clear cup with water.
• Add a layer of shaving cream.
• Add several drops of food coloring.
• When the cloud gets too heavy, the drops fall through as rain! Explain to your child that when water droplets grow heavy in the sky, gravity pulls them down from the clouds as rain, just like in the experiment.