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:

  

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!