Great Easter Craft Ideas for Preschoolers
Easter is a special time of year when families get together to eat their favorite foods, and games like Easter egg rolling and egg hunts are played by children. Easter eggs and church activities also mark the occasion, but you might find that the smallest kids need a few extra activities to keep them occupied. Crafts are a great way of keeping kids entertained because they don’t depend on the weather. If the weather’s great, set a table and chairs in the yard. If it’s too cold for that, make room indoors.
Painting Easter Eggs
Some people have a favorite design they like to paint their eggs with each year, while others want to improve on what they did last year. If you’re stuck for new ideas, why not mix some food coloring with shaving foam to create a funny tie-dye effect? Glue and sand mixed together with food coloring is another way of decorating your eggs a little differently this year. With this you could create a textured egg, which is great for sensory play when there are very tiny tots around.
Easter Egg Carton Chicks
Does anything represent Easter as well for little kids as a newborn chick? Once you’re finished painting and decorating your eggs, don’t throw the boxes away. Instead, change them into adorable chicks which can double as containers for candy. All you need is the leftover egg cartons, some yellow paint which you might have left over from the egg decorating, a black marker pen and some yellow and orange card. You only need to cut out two of the cups and stick them together. Now cut out the beak and feet from orange card and apply those to the chick. Make two eyes with a couple of black dots from your marker and stick two wings made from the yellow card to complete your Easter chick.
Messy Play
Messy play is great for kid’s development as it ignites the senses and tells them that it’s OK to be messy from time to time. It’s also lots of fun for little ones. Egg splatter painting teaches children fine motor skills because they use an old toothbrush to apply paint but they don’t do so by brushing the eggs. You’ll need to show the children how to spatter paint by flicking the brushes back and then letting the paint fly onto the eggs. To make this work, you’ll need to make sure the paint’s watered down enough to allow it to split and splat all over the eggs.
Toilet Roll Bunnies
Making toilet roll bunnies are a great way of entertaining preschoolers for a while. They’re easy and quick to make, and you can build them using things left lying around your home. As well as an empty toilet roll, you also need some fabric, colored paper, and glue. You could buy googly eyes and pipe cleaners but they’re not necessary if you’d rather make some adorable bunnies from things leftover from other craft activities. Make the feet and ears from felt or card, and then either use a marker to create the nose and whiskers or use a button and pipe cleaners if you’d like something a little more special.
Easter Baskets
The kids will need something to carry all those eggs in after your Easter egg hunt so why sit down with the little ones and make baskets out of wooden sticks and plastic cups? As well as disposable plastic cups and the sort of wooden sticks found on popsicles, you’ll need glue and whatever your kids want to decorate their basket with. Apply glue to the sticks and attach them to the outside of the cup and then paint, color and stick decorations to the side to allow the kid’s personalities to come through in the design.
