Easter crafts

Tag Archives: Easter crafts

Apr. 05.

Easter Egg Crafts

By squidmom | Posted in craft, Kid arts & crafts, Spring crafts |
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(I wanted to title this post Easter Egg Crafts and a Caterpillar too…..but I’m trying to keep my titles shorter than I have in the past.)

We wanted to make a few free things to give away this week, and these contact paper eggs were one of our projects.

To make these you need:

a roll of clear contact paper

a trip to outside for nature items(rose petals, flowers, grass etc.)

scissors

construction paper

We went into the front yard and I told the children that I wanted them to gather anything that made them think of spring. They gathered a few flowers, leaves and grass and we came back inside and Gizmo spotted the rose petals on our nature table. Those were quickly added to our spring collection.

I cut out several egg shapes from the contact paper and unpeeled a couple at a time for the girls to work on.

They arranged their materials in the way that they wanted to and then I covered the eggs with a sheet of construction paper. We rubbed each paper a couple of times to make sure that it stuck on properly and then flipped it over and cut it out.

Gizmo soon learned that she could not add more materials after this step.

Once the girls had the hang of making these I went to work on a few gifts of my own.

I’ve been wanting to make these since I saw them here and thought they would be perfect to make for our house and few other people. I’ll be keeping the ones that didn’t come out as well as I would’ve liked. (Such as he one who’s shell I couldn’t get to come off completely.)

I was trying to find the best place for these as our hutch is a little busy now and I ended up putting a few on our coffee table. I was taking this shot as the girls watched and Gizmo started yelling for me to see what she had found on the rose in the picture. It was a caterpillar. And not a small little baby caterpillar either. It was a big ol plump probably going to turn into a butterfly any day caterpillar. This is funny because Gizmo already has a smaller caterpillar that she’s been keeping in a flower vase that we keep covered and this rose has been on my kitchen counter all week. I did what any person would do in this situation.

I made a caterpillar habitat for both caterpillars. Obviously.

I the little guys are content as they have been munching away all afternoon. The girls have been content to sit and watch them and the fish bowl makes doing that a lot easier then the vase we were formally using did. There are two twigs in there that I’ve stuck in place with a bit of play dough and the rose went in there too with a narrow pill holder to hold the water for it.

It’s a different Easter table decoration to what I thought we’d have but I think it works.

Tagged: Easter crafts

Apr. 03.

Counting down the days until Easter

By squidmom | Posted in Family Life, holidays, Spring crafts |
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I’ve been meaning to make a countdown of some sort for Easter for a while now. Gizmo has been asking if it’s time for Easter since Valentine’s day so I knew some kind of physical representation would be appreciated. Leave it to me to wait until Palm Sunday to get started on that.

Don't look at me, look at the lovely cake that y husband and the littles made for me

Friday was my birthday and I started feeling sick then but it wasn’t until Sunday morning that I seriously felt full of yucky. We had to miss church and I felt bad about that because I especially like hearing what the girls have learned and made during class time on special days. All I really felt up to doing was web browsing and I wanted to see if I could find something easy for them to celebrate the day and Easter.

That led me to the Motherhood Your Way blog where I found a very neat print out and suggestions for activities to go with an eight day Easter advent. Her suggestion for day one also led me to Catholic Icing, a really fantastic blog that has tons of ideas for celebrating the holidays. (I even found a cute Palm Sunday craft and a post which offers a printable Resurrection set. )

I still felt sick but I also felt inspired. With some of my birthday money I had purchased these wooden peg men and now I knew what I wanted to do with them.

I made 8 figurines in all, though initally I wanted to have 10. I made two Jesus figures, one pre and post crucifiction, one for the crucifiction and tomb. I also made a Mary Magdalene,a Roman solder,two disciples and two angels. (I still need a Mary and another Roman solder.) The tomb was made by painting some of the the girls’ wooden blocks and a piece of dried salt dough that we’ve been using for our pillar candles. I drew a cross on construction paper, colored it and later laminated it using clear contact paper. The people are all peg men that I painted using acrylic paints. The angel’s wings are also construction paper that I glued on. The whole thing took a little more than an hour(I’m guessing). I’m keeping these on my hutch where we have our nature table so that the girls can reach and interact with them. As the wooden peg people were only around $3.00 for eight at Hobby Lobby and I already had the other materials at hand this came out to be a very frugal way for the girls to have a Resurrection set of their own. I only buy three colors of paint plus black and white when I do have to restock and that is what I would suggest if you wanted to make this on your own but were lacking paints. You can use these colors and mix any color you could possibly need including brown which is mostly yellow plus a little red and a little blue. If you add white to this color you have a decent flesh tone.

Making this set and playing with it took care of day one of our count down eggs.

I had the girls decorate four eggs each and then I wrote down something for us to do each day and where to find the bible story I wanted to read for that day. We then hung them on a piece of crepe paper and then on our door with tape. The girls take turns taking off an egg and then we read the story and do the activity for that day.

(Sunday)Egg 8:Make Resurrection set and discuss, make Palm Sunday craft, read Mark 11:1-11

(Monday)Egg 7:Make spring time themed cookies, read Mark 11:15-18

(Tuesday)Egg6:Make an Easter present for someone, read Mark 14:3-9

(Wednesday)Egg 5: show children and count 30 dimes, discuss the price Judas was paid in order to betray Jesus, read Matthew 26:14-16

(Thursday)Egg 4:Wash siblings feet, read John 13:1-5

(Friday)Egg3: Wrap Jesus figurine in crepe paper and lay in “tomb”, remove figurine from paper on Saturday night so that only the crepe paper remains on Sunday, read Mark 15:21-39

(Saturday)Egg 2:Make resurrection rolls,read Mark 15:42-47

(Easter Sunday)Egg1: Read Luke 24:1-9 as a family together before going to Easter services

took this picture to show right before the boulder gets rolled away obviouslydid not forget to roll the boulder away

(I had help with the devotionals too, there’s a great list here for Holy week with the scriptures plus activities for each of the days.)

I’m on the look out for a good Easter DVD for the kids to watch this week also-I might include it in their Easter basket. We have watched Veggie Tales Easter Carol and we liked that very much, but please feel free to offer any suggestions if you know of anything!

I would love to find something as good as the Prince of Egypt but about the Easter story. I find it is sometimes hard to find good movies that engage the children, have good graphics and stay true to the bible story but I continue to look!

Tagged: Easter, Easter crafts, Easter set

Mar. 23.

Tissue Paper Stained Glass for Easter

By squidmom | Posted in craft, holidays, Kid arts & crafts |
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I have got to start letting my husband come up with my titles….or writing these posts when I’m more awake,one of those two.

We’ve used this technique before here, but I wanted to change things up a little for Easter.

Materials Needed:

Glue (we used homemade but any water based glue would work)

Tissue Gift Paper

Scissors

Sharpie Marker

Plastic Shopping Bag

Tape

I cut a plastic shopping bag in half and taped each half to our table.(One for each of my littles.)

I then drew an egg on one bag (for Gizmo) and a bunny on an another (for the Kid as she wasn’t feeling eggy )with a sharpie marker.

I had the girls cover the plastic with glue, using a paintbrush. (I even had to have a go at making one myself.)

I had set out a large tub of tissue paper squares in various sizes, but you could also let a child tear or cut these themselves.

The kids added the tissue paper squares wherever they wanted to on their plastic bag templates. *This is pretty fail-safe, so do not worry if you or your child go over the template, you will cut out the shape later! If your tissue tears while your child is dabbing the glue on top just patch it up with one of your tissue squares…trust me it works fine.

When they had finished adding the squares they wanted we covered the whole thing with a larger piece of tissue paper and then brushed more glue on top of this.

We let this dry for about two hours and then I was able to easily peel their tissue paper art off.

my egg, now dry. See how the marker bled through? I'm probably the only one who finds this cool...

The sharpie bleeds itself onto the tissue paper and this makes it very easy to cut out the shape that has been drawn on the plastic bag.

We’ve hung these up on our window using a few pieces of tape and plan on making many more for Easter.

This is a great way to re-use any tissue gift wrap that you’ve received with a present, especially if it’s too crumbled to use in wrapping another present.

Side note: You may have noticed that his post is very Littles free, this is because when Gizmo did the craft while her sis was at school….I forgot to take pictures until after she had finished (bloggy fail) and because I almost forgot again when the Kid did hers after school.