Enjoying Easter At Home – Fun Easter Activities For Kids

GardenForums.com a friendly and growing community of gardeners. We feature a Garden Discussion Forum and Garden Photo Gallery. It's a fun and friendly place to talk with other gardeners, ask questions, share you knowledge, view and post photos and more! Whether you're a master gardener, or brand new to the hobby, you'll find something of interest here.



L

Leslie Garner

Guest
Looking for things to do on Easter at home this year? If you’re like me, then you may be feeling pretty bummed right now about having to stay at home during Easter with the children. This is the time for sunrise church service, egg hunts, spring flings, get-togethers with family and friends, and other fun stuff, but with social distancing, it makes me sad for the kids missing out. That said, there are many at-home Easter activities you can do instead.

Easter Activities to Do at Home


This shouldn’t be a time for sadness, and I’m doing my best to make this Easter a fun and exciting time for all the kiddos, even while working from home. I have two children (ages 2 and 4 months) and two school-aged stepdaughters. It can be challenging to find at-home Easter activities that an infant, toddler, and older kids can all enjoy, but it is possible. The older girls enjoy watching their younger siblings do activities, especially when they look so cute or funny doing them. And the younger kids get enthused while intently watching their big sisters complete a project. Win-win for mom!

Here are 10 Easter activities for kids at home – many of which still have learning aspects in different developmental areas. Of course, some of these can be done indoors, but who wants to be stuck inside right now? We’ve been having beautiful weather lately, so we are doing all of our projects outside.

Have a Garden Egg Hunt


For older kids, you can hide eggs in and around the garden area. Make sure to get creative with your hiding, then sit back and have a laugh as you watch them scramble frantically to find the eggs. With the younger kids, just toss eggs out over the ground. For multiple children, designate each child a color to make it fair and prevent them from taking other eggs. Extend the fun after dark with a glow-in-the dark egg hunt! Just place mini glow sticks inside plastic eggs.

Another popular trend I’ve been seeing all over social media lately is to construct some type of egg (construction paper, wrapping paper, whatever you have) and place these in your windows. As you take the children on neighborhood walks or car rides, let them search for eggs in the windows of houses you pass by. I love this idea and hope it catches on in more areas. One other idea is having a family member come by (while you’re all indoors and socially distanced) and “egg” your yard. This is a nice surprise for the kids to find once they get up and go outside.

Try an ‘Egg-Splosive’ Science Experiment


Since this ‘egg-sploding’ egg activity uses Alka-Seltzer tablets and requires adult supervision, the experiment was one our younger kids had to sit on the porch to watch – my toddler thought it was “candy” – as their older siblings went out in the yard to do try it out. The cute little bunny and chick eggs with feet work best for this, since they can stand up easily and give better results. Set the bottom half on a level spot and fill it with water. Drop in your Alka-Seltzer tablets in and quickly replace the top. Now step back and watch it explode!

Get Physical with Different ‘Egg-Ercises’


Need Easter activities to do at home? This is something everyone can participate in, although we did help baby sis act some out too. We used 12 plastic eggs. Come up with different exercises and write on slips of paper, placing them inside the eggs. Everyone in the family can take turns choosing an egg and acting out the movements. I did these numbered one through twelve and tried to make them Easter/garden/spring themed. They included things like three Easter bunny hops, four butterfly twirls, and five chick wing flaps. You can come up with anything you want!

Teach the Easter Story Using Food


With kids home all day you need a good snack idea, and the Easter Story snack mix is just the thing. Letting the kids help put it together makes it more fun. Pretzel sticks represent the cross, Craisins (dried cranberries) for Jesus’ blood, goldfish remind us to be fishers of men, mini vanilla wafers for the stone rolled away from the tomb, lifesavers because Jesus saved us, marshmallows because our sins are washed away, and a sweet treat like M&M’s because the Lord is good. An empty egg can also serve as the empty tomb in the story. We have several Easter books we also read this day to go along with the snack story. Filling plastic eggs makes for a great on-the-go or outdoor snack too!

Create Resurrection Gardens


You need a plastic tray (with drainage holes) and a pot to serve as your empty tomb. Add dirt. Sticks are used to make crosses and hot glue or twine of sorts to attach them together. Press them into the dirt above the tomb. Sprinkle with grass seed and add a couple rocks for more decoration. It takes five to seven days for the grass to spout but gives the kids something to look forward to each day as they check on their gardens. There are also variations to the design; it’s all about preference and materials available to you.

Dye Some Easter Eggs


What’s Easter without some good old-fashioned egg dying? We enjoyed sitting outside at the picnic table, with a nice breeze and the sun shining down as we worked on our eggs. I made several tweaks so all four kids could participate and, just like gardens, no two eggs were alike. For my four-month-old, we put a couple drops of nontoxic egg paints (found at the dollar store) into a Ziploc bag with an egg and sealed it up. Then I simply let her hold and play with the bag. As she did, the paint smeared onto the egg.

My son tends to lick art materials, such as paints. I know most egg dyes and paints are nontoxic, but for him I decided to use Kool-Aid. It smells great, he can lick away, and there’s no added sugars. Mix your Kool-Aid packet with water, stir, and drop your egg in. I put the egg inside a whisk for him because it allowed him to hold onto and lift the egg in and out of the cups easier and with more independence. He also added stickers and used different colors so there were shapes on the eggs once the stickers were peeled off.

Since the girls are older, they had rubber bands and fabric strips to make different designs, bags of rice to leave interesting patterns, and nail polish. Yes, I said nail polish. Add a couple drops (cheap dollar store kinds) to room temperature water. Swirl with a toothpick and place in the egg. Lay on the side to dry. These made really pretty designs; however, next go round we will wear gloves. Lesson learned!

Create a Plastic Egg Color Game


For my toddler, I made an egg drop game that also helped with color recognition and hand-eye coordination skills. I used a dozen eggs, two for each color. Using an old container, box, plastic tote, or whatever you have, tape six cups around the sides. I labeled each cup with a different color correlating to the eggs. Also, before taping on the cups, I cut the bottoms out so the eggs fall through. I gave him a small basket to hold all the eggs, showed him how to sort by color, and drop them down the cup chutes. Once they were all in, I would dump the box. This scattered the eggs and he had to collect them all to play again. Another mom win, as it kept him entertained for quite a while.

Play an Egg Toss Game


Using the same basket of eggs, here’s an egg toss everyone can play. I made a chalk ‘X’ on the sidewalk where each kid could stand. I set up an old laundry basket, baskets of different sizes, and a hula hoop on the ground. The kids tossed eggs back and forth and all around trying to make them into their targets. Even the baby joined in, holding a few eggs and someone would hold her over top of the target and see if they could make it in when she dropped the egg. This also kept them busy for a while.

Have an Easter Relay Race


You can’t have an egg game without adding a relay race. Use a spaghetti or deep spoon. Mark your point A to point B areas, which can be different for various ages, and give each child a spoon. The goal is to reach the destination without dropping the egg. Of course, younger kids just participate for fun while the older ones can compete. I gave my son plastic eggs to use and while his older sisters had a couple real eggs to make it more challenging for them. Break the egg, you lose!

Plant a Magical Easter Garden


I saw this one several years ago working in childcare and always wanted an excuse to do it. This year I got just that. Although my stepdaughters don’t believe in the magic of the Easter Bunny, they were more than willing to be participants to create a magical Easter garden for the little ones. The girls helped their younger siblings plant jellybeans in the garden.

We used this time to have a discussion about waiting patiently for things and what all plants need to grow. After planting, the jellybeans were watered and then we took them inside for an afternoon nap. Now was the chance to add a variety of lollipops. Once the kids woke up, they were delighted to see what sprouted from their jellybeans. This can also be adapted each year in various new ways.

As you can see, there are many things to do on Easter at home. You just need to get creative, something my mom always encouraged us to do anyway!

The post Enjoying Easter At Home – Fun Easter Activities For Kids appeared first on Gardening Know How's Blog.

Continue reading...
 


Gardenforums.com is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.com

Top