Egg Heads

To start this project, you need some empty egg shells. If you are a controlled cracker, crack the egg so that just the top is missing and the rest of the egg is intact. I wasn't sure I could do that, so I chose to blow my eggs. To do this, take a nail and make a small hole at the top and bottom of the egg.

Blow in one hole, and the yolk and white come out the other hole. I did the blowing, but my kids watched. They were fascinated and disgusted by this.

Then I was able to enlarge my hole to the size and form that I wanted it. Next, wash out your egg.

Make a fun little face on it. Isn't he cute? I just used crayons and googly eyes, but you could use your imagination and come up with something new.

Next, fill the egg shell, nearly to the top, with soil. (to hold the eggs up, I made a quick little collar for them with construction paper and scotch tape)

Sprinkle a layer of grass seed on top of your soil, then add just a little more soil on top.

Set it somewhere warm and sunny, like this window ledge, water it, and keep it moist.

This is what ours looked like on day 7. One week to have some funny, green haired little egg heads.

How fun, right?

Easter Egg Rolling

If your family is like mine, you probably spent some time around your kitchen table dying eggs this week. And it was fun.

But now what? I don't actually like to eat hard boiled eggs, and those that are all kinds of funky colours inside kind of weird me out. So what are we supposed to do with these eggs?

An Easter Egg Roll!

It is a tradition from my husband's family and we have brought it into our own. (I remember doing it once as a child with my own cousins, but this is a serious tradition for my hubby. You just don't skip this when Easter 'rolls' around.)

The materials needed are pretty basic: Dyed eggs and a hill. We hike to the top of the hill, and roll the eggs down. I acknowledge, this sounds strange. But it is actually really fun.

And there are plenty of games you can play while you roll them. You can choose an opponent, and both of you roll at the same time to see whose can go the farthest. You can roll the same egg over and over and see whose egg can go down the hill the most times before it breaks. Or you can set up a target at the bottom and see if you can land on it.

And then, there is the entertainment of watching the egg explode when the strain finally does it in.

It is great fun, and a way to use up those dyed eggs. Give it a try.

Lamb Cupcakes

We went to a children's festival on the weekend, and there was a petting zoo. Petting zoos are always fun, but this one was extra special because since it is the middle of April, there were lots of new baby animals for the kids to hold. Baby chicks! Baby goats! Baby bunnies! Baby piglets! And even little white baby lambs! Adorable.

With that fresh in my mind, today we made some baby lamb cupcakes. The inspiration is from the Martha Stewart website. Here is how we did it:


*I mixed up my regular white cake recipe, and a batch of white icing.
*Then we spread the icing over the top of the cupcakes, as you normally would.

*We mad the lamb faces from chocolate chips, Martha used something else, but this is what I had in my kitchen. The eyes were made with the tips pointing down into the icing, and the nose was a chip on its side to make a triangle.
*The ears were large marshmallows cut in half on the diagonal and the wool was made from mini marshmallows. (I got to use up my leftovers from our Children's Book Club)

*The finished product. Isn't it cute?

*Of course, after they were decorated we all enjoyed one. It was funny to see how quickly he could 'shear' his sheep of it's marshmallow wool!

Spring Chick

To make a cute little baby chick, start by tracing an oval on a sheet of yellow construction paper, (or free-handing one if you are better than I am at that sort of thing).

Next have them trace, or help them trace, both their hands onto the yellow paper. If you are careful you will be able to get the oval and both hands on one page. Cut out all the shapes.

Using a small piece of orange paper, fold it in half and cut a triangle with the base on the fold. This will give you a beak that can open and close. Then cut two little clawed feet, also on orange paper. Glue on googly eyes, and feet, and beak.

Using small brads, (I happened to have yellow which worked out nicely) attach the hand prints to the sides of the oval to become the chick's wings.

Tape a couple of yellow feathers onto the bird's head, just to be cute.

Play with your new friend!

Easter Egg Matching Games

Hinged plastic eggs are so great to play games with. Any dollar store will have them this time of year. Go stock up! Here are three matching games I played with my kids this afternoon. Version One: Basic Matching Game *fill plastic eggs with any small item you can find around your home. Lego, small toys, hair elastics, whatever you can find. * To make it a little more challenging, I don't put the matches in matching-coloured eggs. *Set your eggs up in rows and columns so they are ready for the game to begin. *Take turns opening two eggs at a time to find the matching items inside. Version Two: Sound Matches *This time, instead of filling the eggs with whatever I could find that fit, I filled them with things that would make an interesting sound when the egg was shaken. Examples: rice, popcorn kernels, marbles, dimes, etc. *Again, I mixed up the colours of the eggs with the fillings. *Set out the eggs in tidy rows again. *Then take turns picking up two eggs and shaking them to find the matches.

*If you think you've found two eggs that sound the same, open them up to check if you were right.

Version Three: Matching Goodies

*In this version, when I filled the eggs, I filled them up with happy little surprises for the kids. Examples: mini eggs, cream eggs, jelly beans, smarties, marshmallows, chocolate chips, etc.

* Set up the eggs in rows, and rotate taking turns again.

*Of course, this time when they got a match we stopped to enjoy the sweets we found inside. Version Four: Prizes Matching Game *We didn't play this game, because I only thought of it right now as I was blogging these other ones. But wouldn't it be fun to go to the dollar store and get some little toys and gizmos to put in the eggs? Then when a match was found, they could keep it's contents as a prize. I've totally got to do that!

The Easter Egg

I love this book. It is the story of a community of bunnies who do their best each year to make the most beautiful egg they can, for the one who has the superior egg, gets to help the Easter Bunny deliver all the eggs on Easter morning. As I was reading the story, my daughter stopped me and said, "Mom! I know who the illustrator is for this! It is Jan Brett!" I had read the title, but not the credits when I began, so I asked how she knew, and she pointed out a few characteristic points of the paintings, so she knew this must be a Jan Brett book. I was tickled by her observation, and by her ability to recognize and recall similar points from books we'd read previously. After our story, we decorated our own Easter eggs, albeit paper ones. We used sponge painting as our medium, and soft spring colours for our palate.

This egg was decorated to look like the robin's egg from the book. Solid blue.

My girl painted her egg, then swirled the colours all together, and it turned out very pretty.

And my oldest chose that rather to decorate his egg in an abstract pattern, he would paint a spring animal on it, like one of the bunnies did in the book.

I'm afraid that my own creativity was not as great as my children's. This is my very traditional take on an Easter egg.

They are now all hanging up, setting a holiday mood around our home.