Easter fun

Well Easter is coming up really fast!  I am not sure how I feel about Easter at the end of March!  Little Monkey had his last day of preschool until after spring break today and it just sunk in that he is home all next week with no activities to go to.  I need to get planning! :)  We have already started a few Easter themed things around our house and I plan on doing many more before next weekend.  I made an Easter themed sensory tub last weekend and the kids have been loving it.  I did however underestimate how much of a mess easter 'grass' can make!  The kids really love it though, so it can stay until next weekend!

It worked out perfectly that I already had everything for it.  The bunnies hanging on the side are like A Barrel of Monkeys but bunnies instead (they are so much fun), the bunnies laying in the grass are stretchy ones, the picture of the bunnies on eggs are memory cards that are hidden throughout the tub, and there are also blue and pink dyed dried beans in there.  I kept the plastic Easter eggs out because Little Princess loves to stick them in her mouth and I don't want her to choke on them!

Up next we are doing letter and colour matching with plastic Easter eggs.

Hoppy Easter :)

I just wanted to share these with you.  We printed the yellow one out and added our finger prints for extra eggs.
Hoppy Easter Green
Hoppy Easter Yellow
Hoppy Easter Blue

Happy Easter to you and your family!

Shaving cream and paint!

We finally got to our shaving cream and paint project!  I have to say, this was one of my favourites so far. I love the colours and it was pretty easy.
Materials: (I got all but the squeegee at the dollar store......really I should get something for all the advertising I do for them)  :)
Shaving cream
Acrylic Paint
Card stock (or any heavier weight paper)
Paint brush, spoon, or toothpick
Squeegee (I washed off the one we use for our windows.  You could probably use a piece of stiff cardboard in its place if you don't have one.)

Next we sprayed the shaving cream all over the tray and smoothed it out with a spoon.  It was brought to my attention that if you are doing this with little ones you could use whipping cream.  That way if they put it in their mouths it isn't too bad.  *If you do use whipping cream, leave me a comment and let me know how it works.*

Then we added our paint.  Little Monkey really liked doing this part.  Once the paint was on we used the handle of another spoon and swirled all the colours together.  Once they were somewhat mixed we pressed our paper into it.  We did two pieces of paper.  One I traced a bunny and an egg on and the other one I just left blank.  I didn't let Little Monkey see what I had traced on the paper in hopes of surprising him later.

Once we pressed the paper into the shaving cream I took the paper off and laid it on the table.  I let it 'dry' for about 5 minutes.  That gave me enough time to clean off the tray so I had a space to take all the shaving cream off!  After about 5 minutes I used my squeegee to remove the shaving cream from the paper.  Little Monkey got very excited when he saw that there was a bunny and an egg underneath all the shaving cream.

I absolutely love how this turned out. The colours are great and once the shaving cream was off the paper it dried so fast!  I really liked the idea of surprising Little Monkey with an outline on the paper.  This is one of those projects I am going to bring out again and again.  

I hope everyone has a great Easter.  We are decorating eggs tomorrow night.  Oh and a tip for decorating eggs with little ones.....put the egg in a whisk!  The egg will be contained so there is less of a mess trying to get the egg out of the dye.  I will post pictures of Little Monkey and Little Princess using this technique.

Tissue paper and beans

We stuck with the egg theme into today.  Little monkey surprised me and wouldn't leave the table until his whole entire egg was covered!  That doesn't happen often.  I think it might have been because I let him also add the beans (or as he calls them seeds), which he had been eyeing since yesterday, to his egg.
Materials:
Egg template
Cardstock
Tissue paper (a few different colours)
Beans ( I just bought white beans and put them in the bag with a little food colouring and shook them up)
Glue

I let the boys scrunch up some of the tissue paper, but they were more interested in sticking it onto their egg shape.  I really love the colours of the tissue paper....I may will have to go back to the dollar store to get some more.  Little Monkey filled up all the spaces he could.  I think I like this one so much it might have to go on the mantel.

Up next, shaving cream art.  I have never done this before so I am very excited about it. :)

Here is a picture of what I originally dyed the beans for:

  

Easter Bunny's

This morning we had fun making Easter bunny's.  It was a fast simple craft.  I got all the supplies from the dollar store.  I put the glue on the body and ears myself but Little Monkey could have easily done it himself (after a little talk about not using ALL the glue).  Both boys got excited once they put the eyes on.  Little Monkey exclaimed 'Oh look it really is a bunny!'.  Like I was trying to trick him or something :)  They turned out super cute and we probably could have done more than one.  I used some of the left over bunny shapes for lacing.  I didn't get any pictures as I was right in there with the boys.

Next up will involve Little Princess!  She will be getting nice and messy :)

Have a great weekend!

Salt 'painting'

Salt painting is the best way I could describe the fun project we did this morning.  Little Monkey and I had done something similar in the fall with leaves, but I remember thinking the colours were more spring/Easter like.
Both boys really had fun with this one.  I did most of the prep last night in hopes it would go a little more smoothly (and it did).  You start off with salt, different coloured chalk, and baggies.  I buy my salt from the dollar store because all I use it for is crafts.  Pour some salt into your baggies and put a piece (or pieces) of chalk into in and close it up.  Now SHAKE, SHAKE, SHAKE!  It might take some time but your salt will turn the colour of your chalk.  If you find it isn't put it in a bigger bag.

I lucked out and my husband happened to bring home some little plastic dixie cups.  They worked perfectly for all the different colours.  I usually use empty apple sauce containers or whatever small containers I have laying around.  I put in a little teaspoon for the boys to pour the salt onto their pictures.  I think next time I will try and get shakers of some sort as most of the salt just got piled.  I decided to put the pattern on the egg myself.  If you have older children they could probably design something themselves.  Little Monkey gets a little crazy when you let him have glue and I envisioned him squeezing all of it into one big pile :)  I gave the boys their eggs and gave them a quick demonstration.  They had lots of fun.  They mostly just piled the salt and at the end we dumped out the remaining salt all over the picture.  We then shook all the extra salt off and set it aside to dry.

I really like how they turned out.  The colours are a little more vibrant in real life.  I am hoping it won't all fall off when it dries.....I will keep you posted.  

Next up is bunnies and Easter lacing.  

Easter Egg Painting

Today we did some painting with plastic Easter eggs.  It was so much fun.
I have a lot of the plastic Easter eggs....do you think I could find all of them to do matching colours...nope!  Oh well, we still had lots of fun :)

I started off by watering down in the paint so it would come out of the eggs easier.  As I started to put the paint in the eggs I realised that there are holes at both ends of the eggs and I was getting messy!  I could only imagine how messy the boys were going to get.  Then it hit me....tape over one end.  Crisis adverted.  Fill up the small half of the egg with the paint. I found if you didn't put enough in it would just coat the inside of the egg and not much else would come out onto the paper.

I figured this would be the perfect craft for our trays!  It made clean up so easy.  I set the boys up and showed them the holes and how to shake.  They went to town and had so much fun!  Watch out, too much shaking does cause the eggs to pop open.  Little Monkey would laugh and laugh every time his popped open.  He has no problem getting messy!  I am trying to figure out if it would work with puffy paint.  Maybe that will be a naptime experiment! :)

Up next salt 'painting'.  I am very excited about this one!