This weekend we are staying at Granny and Grandpa’s again.  We arrived on Friday evening, and before we were even out of bed yesterday morning the children were talking about the Easter crafts they would like to do.  Rabbit and daddy started the day by reusing a Christmas decoration to make an Easter garland.  It is a silver chain with stars on, and they drew, decorated and cut out lots of Easter eggs to stick on the chain, alternating with the stars.  Owl, Monkey, Tiddler and I also decorated one egg each, but daddy did quite a few and Rabbit did the most.  While they were doing this, Monkey made a bunny basket (an idea which we have used before, from our Usborne book of Easter things to do.)  He did it fairly independently, with just a little help from daddy, and I was so impressed that I went to the village shop and bought some sweeties to put in it!

In the afternoon, we went to the church for some more craft activities and an egg hunt.  The children decided to start with the egg hunt, and got plenty of fresh air running round the church yard looking for printed eggs with a letter on.  They had to write down the letter and unscramble them to find something we eat at Easter.  The big boys did theirs independently, and daddy helped Tiddler while I helped Rabbit.  I was very proud of her efforts writing all the letters herself, and then writing the answer (hot cross bun). We then went inside the church, and the children had a wonderful time making daffodil windmills, Easter baskets, scratch art eggs, Easter bonnets and decorated foam eggs with magnets on the back.

Later in the afternoon, I made chocolate nests with Rabbit and Tiddler (much better than the ones we made on Wednesday, mainly because we had enough chocolate this time.) After that I tried dyeing hard boiled eggs with all the children.  I got them to stick stickers on (shiny ones so they wouldn’t soak off in the water – well that was the idea) and draw on them with wax crayons, before placing them in a bowl of water mixed with lots of food colouring.  It wasn’t particularly successful because most of the stickers came off, though some stayed on better than others.  So if we try it again, I will get a wider range of stickers to see which ones work best.  Also, despite using about a third of a bottle of food colouring, the dye wasn’t really strong enough.  I think we will just have to revert to our usual method of drawing on them with felt pen, and maybe try again with the dyeing next year.

Anyway, overall it was a succesful happy crafty day, and we are all having lots of fun.  Hope you are too.  Happy Easter!