Entertaining the children during the Easter break is not always the easiest thing to do. If you are at home this Easter, you may want some tips on things the children can do that will keep them occupied and having fun. Our ideas will not break the bank and are a great alternative for indoor fun especially if the weather is not in your favour.
Use up odd socks by making an Easter bunny sock puppet. Use buttons or cut out pieces of paper or card for eyes and a nose and hey presto! You have all you need to create your own Easter bunny puppet show.
Make Easter cards. You can use scraps of paper, old birthday and Christmas cards, magazines etc.
Memory Minute – Place ten small household items on a tray or table, cover with a tea-towel. For example, a button, keys, a cotton bud, a fork etc. Show the items for about thirty seconds then re-cover. Each child has a minute to write down as many items as they can. Smaller children can reel them off and you can write them for them. The best memory wins.
Egg Collage – give each child a piece of paper and draw a big egg shape outline on it. With a pot of paste and scraps of material or ribbon they can make their own creative picture. For ribbon scraps raid your wardrobe and snip off all those ribbon hangers in the shoulders of tops and jumpers that often don’t seem to serve a purpose and usually end up getting in the way. Have a small prize for the best one or the best one in each age group so everyone gets to be a winner.
Mini egg challenge – Make up a small race track or obstacle course on the floor or table. Give each child four chocolate mini eggs of the same colour and a straw. Let each one have a turn at blowing down the straw to guide each egg in turn to the end of the course. You could use your watch to time how long it takes for all their eggs to get “home”. To make it even more of a challenge you could tie their hands behind their backs with a scarf so they are not tempted to use them to cheat.
Easter decorations – Use paints or felt tips to decorate some eggs (you can use hard boiled or blow some if you prefer). To do these, make small holes each end and then blow the contents into a bowl – you can use this for scrambled eggs or omelettes for tea. As it’s a good idea to rinse the eggs out and leave them to dry you might like to do this the day before the planned activity. Keep the egg box to stand them in and it’s also useful to put them in when they are drying off after being decorated. Suggest faces with glasses, hair, beards, etc. or zigzag patterns or just let the children’s imaginations run riot. When they’re done they can be used on a plate as a decoration – perhaps with a couple of chicks on top (these are really cheap to buy in card shops or similar or make your own with yellow wool) or you could get a small twiggy branch from the garden or elsewhere and stand it in a vase and hang your eggs on with cotton or ribbon.
