Sunday, 20 April 2014

10 types of fun to catch with kids during Easter.

Though the Easter isn't the season of flirting but one can make it a period to chill out with kids and make them love you more as Parents just as Christ did to us.

Here are 10 things you might like to try:

1. Share an Easter Banquet:

Invite your friends and family to an Easter afternoon tea. Cover a trestle table with a bright yellow tablecloth and prepare Easter-inspired treats. Spread hummus on rice crackers, position olives for both eyes and nose, finely cut carrot sticks for whiskers and cucumber ovals for ears. Boil a pot of eggs. Mix the yolks and whites with mayonnaise and curry powder then display the mixture in the cracked shells. Fill vol-au-vents pastry nests with tuna mornay topped with corn or try making mashed potato nests and filling them with a savoury mince and vegetable mix. For sweets, try salted caramel popcorn in paper Easter baskets or fill meringue nests (available in all good supermarkets) with Persian fairy floss (pashmak) and yogurt covered sultanas. Or, try hosting a jam-making day? Children can decorate calico with fabric pens in Easter themes for the jam jar lids.

2. Make Easter bracelets.

Cut 2cm tall egg shapes from 3mm thick felt in a range of colours. Embellish the eggs with seed beads and embroidery. Use robust embroidery thread on your needle then thread a felt egg followed by a timber bead. Repeat process until your bracelet is long enough to fit your wrists then tie off for a stylish Easter fashion accessory.

3. Write an Easter story with your family.

Take a new journal and jot down a sentence to begin the adventure. "Once upon a time, the Easter Bunny was preparing to visit Ned's family. He gathered up his big basket and filled it with all kinds of Eastertime harvest treats- freshly popped popcorn, juicy red apples, boiled eggs, oranges the size of melons and chocolate of all shapes and sizes wrapped in cellophane and foil. The Easter Bunny popped the basket over his arm and started to hop towards Bonogin when…." Include specific identifying details such as your family and friends names, your family rituals, the things the children love to do this year, their ages- even what the children's bedrooms look like at present. Invite the children to illustrate the story too. These stories may just become family heirlooms.

4. Make a "Hunt for the Easter Treasure"game.

Use fimo or modelling clay to make clay hares, clay chickens, fimo eggs decorated with dots and stripes, red and white mushrooms, Easter fairy friends and Easter gnomes. Invite the older children to hide the treasures and send the little ones out with a miniature drawstring bag to discover and collect what they can find.

5. Host an Easter Headband Parade.

Cut a length of felt 25 cm long and 8 cm in width. Fold the felt in half longways and tack a piece of elastic to both ends ensuring the band now fits the child's head. Use blanket stitch to sew it together. Embellish the headband with your choice of easter decorations- felt bunny rabbits, button gardens, embroidery flowers, coloured felt eggs, sunny skies, hills and hideaways and rabbit holes. Offer a prize for the most creative, the most colourful or the one with the most eggs.

6. Make Easter candy bag cards for all your little friends.

Simply cut a rectangle from cardboard long enough and wide enough to cover a clear cellophane cookie bag. Fold in half, then score card at 1 cm and 2cm away from fold on one side. Place the bag inside the card, fold it in half on the original line and bend the top of the card over to seal. Punch two holes through the card and cellophane and thread it with coloured ribbon. Embellish the front of the card with your own Easter message, then fill the cookie bag with a delicious homemade choc chip or shortbread bickie.

7. Easter Egg garden bowling.

Boil some eggs and invite the children to colour them with crayon and pencil. Position a set of child-size bowling pins on the grass and take turns rolling the eggs to try and knock down the pins.

8. Plan for an Easter games day.

Find Easter-inspired word scrambles, counting games, connect the dots and printable jigsaw puzzles. http://puzzles.about.com /od/holidaypuzzles/qt/easter.htm

9. Make up your own homemade Easter Bingo.

Draw up 9-square grids on light card. Fill the grids (different words for each grid) with Easter-inspired words such as Easter Egg, Rabbit, Bunnies, Hat Parade, Egg Hunt, Nest, chocolate, Lent, spring, fun, feast, boiled eggs, Easter Tree, rabbit hutch, chickens, rooster or . Write up all the words used on the grids on a set of flash cards for the bingo caller. Shuffle the cards, hand out the grids and coloured markers to all bingo players then begin. For prizes, why not make a pompom

10. Display your Easter inspired goodness in the corner of your lounge room.

Why not search for twig nests or make your own from leaves and found materials or build an Easter tree from sturdy branches? Hang hand-blown dyed eggs on the tree along with iced gingerbread cookies in egg, leaf and rabbit shapes too.

Perhaps you now have other fabulous ideas too. Things that will inspire, excite, involve and engage your family members, young and old.

Happy Easter!!!

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