Easter Archives - JDaniel4s Mom

8 Awesome Easter Crafts for Kids

March 30, 2015 By Deirdre

There have been a number of Easter crafts for kids shared here JDaniel4’s Mom. I have also shared some on other blogs as guest posts. Each was simple to construct and used items many of us have in our craft closets at home. They were designed for preschool or early childhood children to create. I am sure that older children would enjoy making them too. I thought you would enjoy getting to see my favorites all together.

Easter Crafts for Kids

LEGO Easter Egg

LEGO makes great tools for illustrating all sorts of holiday themes. Children can come up with the subject of their creation on their own, or they could be asked to create something in particular. An Easter egg with repeating stripes could be something they could be asked to make. (Patterning is not only a wonderful craft theme; it also allows kids to work on a math concept.)

The great thing about LEGO crafts is that they are not permanent. They can be created or uncreated by their artist over and over again.

Creating a Patterned Egg and Recording Its Shapes

Last year my son and I worked on another craft with patterned eggs. He placed pre-cut shapes all over a blue Easter egg. Then he recorded how many of each shape he used. This activity not only created a beautifully crafted egg, but also provided the opportunity to work on shape identification.

Torn Paper Chick

It is really fun to tear the paper you are going to use in a craft. The process of tearing is also a great fine motor activity. The actual tearing done for this craft took some thought and concentration. We were trying to create the shapes needed to create the various parts of the chick.

Bunny Bags

My son helped me decorate bunny bags to hold special rabbit cookie bars we made to take to his teachers at school. I just love the eyebrows and freckles that he added to his bunnies. Easter crafts for kids become unique and special when kids bring their own whimsy and creativity to them. This bag project illustrates that truth beautifully.

Doily Chick

Egg-shaped doilies make the cutest Easter chicks. This simple craft looks kind of elegant with its frilly shape cutouts. It was really fun to make a chicken out of an egg.

Cereal Box Patterned Egg

Cardboard from an old cereal box was used to create line patterns that could be drawn on an Easter egg along with an egg template. All the templates could be placed in a writing or art center for children to create their own special Easter egg. We used crayons for this fine motor exercise. Your children may prefer colored pencils or markers.

Easter Crafts I Made For Others

Tin Foil Easter Egg

Special markers and cookie cutters were used to decorate a tin foil egg I shared on Instead of the Dishes. Kids will love decorating a cardboard egg covered in foil with an Easter theme the way we did.

Paper Plate Bunny

A paper plate, felt, and some pipe cleaners were all we needed to create a paper plate bunny for Kids Activity Blog. The felt nose, ears, eyes, and mouth give the bunny a soft and fuzzy texture. The ruffled edges of the paper plate gave his chin texture too.

If your children create any of these Easter crafts for kids, please leave me a comment below or leave me a comment on my Facebook page. If you take a picture of your version of one of the crafts and share it on Instagram, please tag me. I would love to see it.

Science Projects for Kids- Plastic Egg Greenhouse

March 26, 2015 By Deirdre

Last year I found some giant plastic eggs in a clearance section at a local big box store. I didn’t know if I could use them for science projects for kids or maybe a learning game. For their low price I just knew if I bought them we would use them.

As with many things that you buy on sale to use next year, I forgot about them until was cleaning out a closet this spring. When I came across them I thought they would be great for some science projects for kids.

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That is when the idea for the Easter egg greenhouse came together. After a little thinking about what to plant in the giant plastic egg, I decided would be the great incubator for a bean seed. The egg had two holes on the bottom that would be great for drainage and two small holes on the top.

Here is How The Project Worked:

We have a whole bunch of old dried beans that we have been using for math activities. I wasn’t sure that the tiny plant inside one of those beans would still grow, but I decided it was worth trying to see if they would grow.

The plastic egg was filled with potting soil almost to its rim. One of the dried beans was pushed into the soil, but not covered by it. I wanted my family and I to be able to see the changes taking place through the egg’s clear dome.

It took a few days of sitting in the sun and getting lightly watered for the seed to start to grow. My son and I loved to see what was happening. It was great to talk about each stage of the seed’s growth. The bean seed seemed to change almost daily once if popped open.

Finally the tiny plants stem started running out of space to grow up. We had thought it might grow horizontally, but that ended up not happening. The tiny plant was bumping up against the top of the egg.

Along running out of space to grow up, the plant was very unstable. Its roots did not grow down. They stayed on the surface.

We had to make the decision to move the plant to a flower pot. The greenhouse was a good place to start, but the plant couldn’t continue to successfully grow there. We needed to have a part of its stem and roots covered in soil. Here the plant would be able grow taller and stronger.

Conclusions gained during this science experiment:

The plastic egg was a great place to start a seed.
The plastic egg allowed the water to condense on the side of the egg.
This plant seed probably needed to be planted under the soil for the roots to grow correctly.
An old seed can still be planted and develop into a plant.
Sometimes plants outgrow their container and need to be moved.

Here are some other Easter themed science projects for kids:

How to Make Spider Web Eggs

How to Make a Rubber Egg

Experimenting with Spinning Eggs

Floating or Sinking Eggs

If you try any of these science projects for kids , please leave me a comment below or leave me a comment on my Facebook page.

Easter Arts and Crafts- Doily Chick

March 22, 2015 By Deirdre

Although this doily chick is part of an Easter Arts and Crafts series, it could be created during a farm unit or a unit on the signs of spring. It is simple enough for young children to craft and could be made more elaborately by older children.

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We started with White Oval Doilies we found in our craft closet. (I am not sure when we got them. It may have been an after Easter sale.) The idea was to create a chick with eggs. We kept one of the eggs whole and cut the second doily egg in half.

Then we paused a moment to talk about symmetry. We did have a whole egg that we could place the two sides of the second one. It was a great time to talk about how both sides were the same or almost the same. One side was a tiny bit bigger. Despite that fact is was still a good time to talk about symmetry.

Next we cut out chicken legs. I am not sure that a chicken’s legs are really this chunky. We didn’t look at picture of real chicken before doing this craft. If you decide to do create chicks as one of your Easter Arts and Crafts, you may want to take a few moments to see what a chick or chicken’s legs look like.

The wiggly eyes were placed on the Easter arts and crafts chick next. (We had a bag of eyes of various sizes so, we had to dig through to find eyes that match.) The first set I tried on my chick didn’t match. They made him look sort of odd. While I could have left them on him, I decided to keep digging through and look for a matching pair of eyes.

The chick’s beak went on next. The beak could have been just an orange triangle. Rather than have flat beak we went for a more 3 dimensional beak. It make it look like the chick might be trying to talk.

All that was left now was to add the wings. Our wings were placed on top of the chick’s egg shaped body. You may decide that you want to have the wings under the body. There really isn’t a wrong way to craft this chick. Your children may decide to have the chick’s wings flapping above its head.

Other Easter Arts and Craft Ideas for the Doily Chick

You could add Colored Feathers to the chick’s head or wings. ( We didn’t have any at home so, we didn’t use them.)
Children could cut out small bit of yellow tissue to add a fluffy effect to the chick’s body or wings. ( We didn’t have tissue either.)
Various shades of yellow paint could be dabbed onto the chick. ( We did have paint, but decided not to use it.)
You could read the book The Golden Egg Book before crafting the chick. It is a wonderful Easter story.

Here are some other Easter Arts and Crafts for Kids:

Cool Math for Kids- Easter Egg Learning

Fun Craft for Kids- Torn Paper Chick

Fine Motor Easter Egg Craft

If you try making any of these easter arts and crafts, please leave me a comment below or leave me a comment on my Facebook page.

Fine Motor Easter Craft

March 19, 2015 By Deirdre

This fine motor Easter activity uses an old cereal box cut into an egg shape and various line shapes for children to use to create and decorate an egg. The front and back panels of the box were the perfect size for the eggs we would need to create the templates. If you would like to replicate this Easter activity for your children at home or school, there are only a few things you will need to do.

How To Create The Easter Activity Templates

We started by cutting an egg shape out of white paper.
Then the front and back sections of the cereal box were cut out of the box. After the front and back sections were off the box, the flaps were cut off of their tops and bottoms.
The white paper egg shape was then traced onto the front and back sections of the cereal box. It was important to have the egg templates both be the same size.
One of the sections was left whole. The other section was cut out like a puzzle. The puzzle pieces had wavy, pointed and squared lines. When all the pieces were cut out, they could be slide back together like a puzzle. I wanted to make sure that children could place the puzzle pieces inside the egg and trace them it they wanted too.

Doing the Easter Activity

The first part of the activity is to trace the egg template onto a piece of white paper with a crayon.
Then the puzzle piece templates can be traced onto the outline of the egg. Children could use the puzzle piece that fits in that section of the egg or another piece if they like. They really isn’t a right or wrong way to add lines to the egg. Children could actually add horizontal lines rather than vertical lines. The idea is to add lines to decorate the eggs.

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Hints:

If your children are having trouble gripping round crayons, you may want to try having them use Crayola Anti-Roll Triangular Crayons. They are easier for some children to color with. A pencil grip on a crayon might help too.

The egg we created doesn’t have the area between its lines colored in, but the egg would look great colored in.

The wax from previous tracings tends to smear onto the paper off of the puzzle pieces when you use the brown cardboard side of the box face down. The waxy side of the box with words and pictures doesn’t seem to smear as much or very little.

I have just shared a few ways that you could this activity. I bet you can come with a number of unique twists you can add to it to make them your own. If you do, please leave me a comment below or leave me a comment on my Facebook page.

If you are looking for some more learning based Easter activities, you will want to check out the following activities.

Cool Math for Kids- Easter Egg Learning

Dolch Sight Words- Unscrambling Eggs

Carrot Number Writing Activity

How to Make Spider Web Eggs

Easter Egg Hunt for Missing Numbers with Printable

March 17, 2015 By Deirdre

Last spring we did a cool math for kids activity that featured an Easter egg craft and and tally chart. This year I decided to make another Easter themed math activity. It has two parts just like last year activity did. Kids have an Easter egg hunt outside and complete this Hunting for Numbers Page(This page has been updated) inside. Actually you can do both activities inside your home or classroom. We did this activity on a beautiful spring day! It made sense to take the Easter egg hunt outside.

Before we started the egg hunt I placed an egg shaped sticker with a number on it inside each of the eggs. (I didn’t have egg shaped stickers so, I cut them out of round colored stickers. You may have egg shaped stickers or may choose to purchase some.) There were stickers created for each of the missing numbers on the math sheet (Numbers 1, 3-13). The stickers were lightly placed on the inside of each of the eggs. I wanted them to be easy to remove from the eggs. I also wanted the stickers to have enough stickiness left on them to stick to the missing number math sheet.

Hint:
If you wanted to, you could have this activity in a center! You could have the eggs already in an Easter basket instead of having an Easter egg hunt. Once kids are finished with the activity, they could place a new set of stickers into the Easter eggs for the next person.

It will be up to you to decide how difficult you want to make it to find the eggs. For our Easter egg hunt I kept it really easy. My son was able to collect the eggs easily and get started with the second part of the activity in no time.

Here are some of the ways children could complete the second part of the Easter egg hunt activity:

Children could come up with the missing numbers for each of the number facts and write in the numbers. They could then open each of the eggs and search for that number. Once they have found that number, they could put it on top of their handwritten number.
Children could open one egg at a time and search for the missing number blank that that number would fill.
Children could open all of the eggs and place the number stickers on the outside of its egg. They could decide what number they needed for the first number sentence and place the number sticker in the missing number space. Children could go down one column and then the other.

I have just shared a few ways that you could do both parts of this activity. I bet you can come with a number of unique twists you can add to them to make them your own. If you do, please leave me a comment below or leave me a comment on my Facebook page.

If you are looking for some more learning based Easter activities, you will want to check out the following activities.

Cool Math for Kids- Easter Egg Learning

Dolch Sight Words- Unscrambling Eggs

Carrot Number Writing Activity

How to Make Spider Web Eggs

Preschool Activities- Shape Sheep

January 16, 2015 By Deirdre

This shape sheep craft is one of those preschool activities that opens the door to explore shapes and gives you a cute end product. It would be great for a farm unit, The Year of the Sheep,a nursery rhyme unit or Easter.

In fact I think it would one of those preschool activities that would be fun to do after reading or singing the following rhymes:

Mary Had Little Lamb

Mary had a little lamb,
His fleece was white as snow,
And everywhere that Mary went,
The lamb was sure to go.

He followed her to school one day,
Which was against the rule,
It made the children laugh and play
To see a lamb at school.

And so the teacher turned it out,
But still it lingered near,
And waited patiently about,
Till Mary did appear.

“Why does the lamb love Mary so?”
The eager children cry.
“Why, Mary loves the lamb, you know.”
The teacher did reply.

Baa, Baa, Black Sheep

Baa, baa, black sheep,
Have you any wool?
Yes, sir, yes, sir,Three bags full;
One for the master,
And one for the dame,
And one for the little boy
Who lives down the lane.

What do you need to put the shape sheep together?

Shape pieces:

White circles
Long black rectangles
Black trapezoids
Small black circles
Large white ovals
Small white ovals
Small black squares

Non- Shape pieces:

Small white almond shapes (For the sheep’s ears)

Small pink almond shapes (For the sheep’s ears)

Putting the Sheep Together:

There are several approaches that can be taken when setting up preschool activities.

You can create a sample of what the final product might look like.
You can give each child a set of the shapes that could be used to create a shape sheep and leave it up to their imagination.
You could place the materials in a central spot and have children select what they will need to create a shape sheep.

There really isn’t a right or wrong way for this activity to be done. You know your children and how they best like to approach preschool activities and crafts. I tend to let my son see a final product and he tends to end up with a final product that looks very different from the sample. We end with two great crafts in the end that reflect our personalities!

Extending Preschool Activities Like The Shape Sheep

Children can be asked to count how many of each shape they have used.
They can be asked to create a find all the parts of the sheep that equal two.
Counting how many shapes their are with four sides would be fun too.

Here are some other preschool activities that can found on the blog:

Fall Preschool Activities

Five Little Apples Song and Craft

Color Activity- Sorting Ninja Turtles

If you do make a shape sheep of your own, please leave me a comment below telling me about it or share a picture of it on my Facebook page.

{Dolch Sight Words} Unscrambling Egg Letters

April 15, 2014 By Deirdre

You just never know what you are going to find when you open up a plastic egg. You might even find a Dolch sight words game. That is exactly what my son found when he opened the plastic eggs in the brown basket above. While not the jelly beans he might have hoped to find in the plastic eggs, the letter cards that built sight words were delicious fun.

My son gets a list of sight words to work on each month in his homework notebook. Sometimes I just have him read them to me. Sometimes we play a sight word kitchen tile game. Sometimes I create a dolch sight words game that we can play using them. This plastic egg sight word game is one I created for him.

As I mentioned, I put letter cards into a set of plastic eggs. The letter cards in each egg matched one of the colors on the outside of these tie dyed eggs. This was done so we could easily put the letters back in the egg that they came from. (I guess that really doesn’t matter. The words could be placed in any color egg. I just liked having them matching.)

I asked my son to open one egg at a time and sort the letters in that egg into a word. Two, three and four letter words were the ones on the list I selected. Having a few simple words mixed with more challenging longer ones seemed like a great idea.

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When one egg word had been unscrambled, I had my son move on to another egg. There were some that he was able to guess as soon as he had set the letters out on the table.

When we had unscrambled all of the egg words, we pulled out his homework notebook and looked at the weekly list of word on his homework calendar. I asked my son to create as many of the words using the egg letter cards. It didn’t matter whether all the letters were the same color or not in a word. The idea was to interact with as many words as possible.

It was amazing to see how many words could be created using the letters found in the plastic eggs.

Here are some Dolch sight words in activities we have done in the past:

Sight Word Game- Apple Tree Words

Easy Sight Word Snack

Worksheet for Kindergartners- Writing Words on a Rainbow

If you are looking for more sight words activities, you may want to check out my Learning to Read board on Pinterest.

{What is Easter?} Easter Ideas and Craft for Kids

April 13, 2014 By Deirdre

Beyond Easter baskets filled with treats and egg hunts what is Easter? Let’s look at Easter ideas and crafts that focus on true meaning of Easter. There are so many wonderful ways to share the true meaning of Easter. I am going to share some Easter ideas we have done along with several really wonderful ideas from other blogs.

Each of the Easter ideas acts as a tool or avenue for children to understand the Easter story. Each is a hands on and interactive. You might want to call them object lesson elements. I like to say that each helps answer this question “What is Easter?”

I just love Hands On: As We Grow’s Easter Craft with Tissue Paper Cross Collage. You need to stop by and see how this craft came together. Having a cross up in the window during the Easter season will draw your family into discussion about the cross and what it stands for.

Teach Beside Me tells the Easter Story in Eggs. This Easter idea includes scriptures that share the Easter story, props, and a wonderful way to extend the activity. Having several ways to explore and review the Easter story is wonderful.

An Easter Cross from Egg Cartons by Teach Me Mommy displays the kingship of Jesus with its purple painted surface. Adding a heart to the cross added an wonderful discussion element. Parents can talk about the love of Christ for mankind along with Christ’s love for His Father.

My Easter Ideas

We made Empty Tomb Rolls to explore the Easter ideas of Jesus being buried in a tomb and rose again. It is so exciting to open the oven and see that the rolls were empty!

Last year we made Easter Story Cookies. Each step in the cookie making process fits with a section of scripture from the Easter story. I just loved reading the verses and sharing their meaning as we created a delicious treat.

True Meaning of Easter Rocks or the Jelly Bean Prayer Rocks share through words on the rocks and the colors on the rocks. This Easter idea can be shared over and over again in the days leading up to Easter.

My husband shared the story behind this {Craft for Kids} Legend of the Dogwood with me. It was an Easter idea we need to explore by creating a hand print and fingerprint craft. It truly explores the meaning of death of Jesus on the cross.

This is just a small collection Easter ideas to find more explore my Easter Crafts, Snack, and Activities board on Pinterest. It contains pins that answer the question “What is Easter?” along with lots of other Easter Ideas.

Fun Craft For Kids- Torn Paper Easter Chick

April 12, 2014 By Deirdre

Easter crafts are fun to make and send to friend and family. We recently sat down at the kitchen table and created this fun craft creates a fun torn paper Easter chick.

One of the best things about torn paper crafts is that there isn’t a wrong way to tear paper. There are times when you try to tear the paper in a shape as we did for the chicks head and body. When you are trying to tear it in a shape, it can help to draw that shape on the paper and tear around it. Be warned that sometimes the paper won’t cooperate. You may end up with a wonky looking circle. We like odd shaped circles at my house so, that didn’t bother us.

There are times when you just want to tear off strips of paper. When you are going to use those strips as feathers for an Easter craft chick, having odd bends or twists in the paper you are tearing works out really well.

We tore the body and feathers for the chicks out of yellow paper. The beak and the feet of the chicks were torn out of orange paper.

We both experimented a little with torn paper placement on our Easter craft chick before we glued the pieces in places. One of us put a little more thought into our creation than the other, but we both shifted, flipped, and rotated the torn pieces.

When we both had our chick’s bodies decorated the way we wanted them to be with torn paper, we added eyes to our Easter craft. Once again we tore paper. White paper was used for the outer eye and black paper was used for the inner eye or eyeball.

I just love the look of a fun craft of torn paper. The torn paper seems to give this Easter craft texture. The layering effect of the paper also gives it a 3-D look too.

These Easter craft chicks turned out as well as the torn paper penguin we made in the winter. I will need to work on some more torn paper crafts with JDaniel. If you are looking for more spring art projects, you may want to check out my Spring Craft board or Easter Craft board on Pinterest.

Easter Craft for Kids- Bunny Themed Treat Bags

April 8, 2014 By Deirdre

Bunny bags are a fun Easter craft! We created bunny bags to contain some special treats for JDaniel’s teachers at school. They are really wonderful and we decide to send some yummy treasures their way. This fun Easter craft was super easy to create using materials we had at home. JDaniel’s rabbits fun facial features made his teachers super happy.

Materials Needed for This Easter Craft:

Brown paper lunch bags

White construction paper

Pink construction paper

Pink pompoms- small

Wiggly eyes- large

Magic Markers

Glue Stick

Hole Punch

Index Card

Ribbon

We started by gluing white construction paper cutouts of a bunny’s head to the brown paper bags. I went ahead and cut them out ahead of time. You could draw an outline of the bunny’s head for your children to cut out or have them cut out the bunny head free hand.

Next we glued some pink ear inserts onto the bunny’s ears.

Then we glued on the pink pompom as the nose and the wiggly eyes. Having the eyes and noses in place on the bags really seemed to help us both picture where the other facial features would need to go.

I went ahead and added a mouth to the one bunny bag that I was going to do. It would be a good example for JDaniel. He would be able to make a bag similar to mine was what I was thinking. I was wrong. He created unique bunny faces for each bunny that were more awesome than mine was.

JDaniel’s bunnies ended up with eyebrows, eyelashes, and super fun mouths. One bunny even had hair. They were so cute. I couldn’t help smiling from ear to ear as each one was completed.

We set these fun Easter ideas aside to dry overnight. When we knew for sure that the eyes and noses were solidly in place, we added the treats to the bags. Each teacher got a number of pieces of Hershey’s Easter candy from a box of candy I was sent to use to make Blonde Brownie bunnies. They also received a Blonde brownie bunny.

When the bags were filled, I folded down the top of the bag once and place two holes in the flap with a hole punch. We placed a foot long piece of ribbon through the holes. Onto one end of the ribbon I put a gift card I had made in advance. Each card read “Hopping You Have a Great Day!” Then the ribbon was tied in a bow.