Easter Egg Tree

In the book Mrs. Sharp's Traditions: Reviving Victorian Family Celebrations Of Comfort & Joy by Sarah Ban Breathnach there is a description of a traditional Victorian Easter Egg Tree:

 

The tree was an evergreen and, instead of a Santa Claus or fairy at the top of the tree, “Br’er Bunny” had the post of honor. This was a large toy rabbit and everywhere among the branches hung gayly colored eggs by loops of ribbon. Little baskets were made from eggshells, with fine wire for handles, and hung from the very tips of the branches. They were filled with tiny candy eggs. Rabbits and little chicks of candy and cotton batting peeped out from among the branches. Eggshells were painted and finished up to represent clowns, brownies, and gnomes. The tree was lit with candles in tin holders, and everyone, both young and old, voted the tree as pretty as any Christmas tree.

 

Our Easter egg tree is much simpler. In fact, it’s not even a tree but more of a twig with a few branches. Nevertheless, it was a twig which was decorated by Connor and, he took his role quite seriously. He selected the Peter Rabbit pot to go along with his favourite Easter book Peter Rabbit's Happy Easter. Then he hung some decorative eggs on the branches and placed his painted eggs in a small basket beside the Easter egg tree.

 

With each coming year as Connor and Sarah grow, our Easter egg tree will grow along with them and become more decorative. I want them to look forward to this tree the same way children look forward to trimming the Christmas tree. Also, each year we will add new decorations the way new baubles are added to a Christmas tree.

 

 

ABC Adventures – Letter B Outline

Our theme for the letter B is Bunnies and Baskets. So, for the remainder of the Easter holidays we will be focusing on Easter activities.

 

Letter B Suggested Books and Products

Arts and Crafts

Basket Weave (Basket Pattern, Glue, and paper squares)

Bunny made from Doilies

Cotton Wool Bunny

Bunny Wand using a Wooden Spoon

Paper Bag Basket

Pom Pom Easter Bunny

Easter Bunny Ornament

Learning Centers

Nesting Plastic Easter Eggs by Colour

Basket Count

A Patterned Egg Carton using plastic eggs

Sandpaper Letter B

Letter B Lacing

Letter B Box Hunt

Bunnies and Carrots

Play Dough Eggs and Baskets

Games

Online Easter Egg Hunt Game

Bunny Trail – Hop like a Bunny

Printable Peter Cottontail Board Game

Songs & Rhymes

Easter Time is Here Again by Hap Palmer

Here Comes Peter Cottontail

Cooking Activities & Snacks

Carrot Cake

Carrot and Celery Sticks

ABC Adventures – Letter S Part 2

Welcome to our ABC Adventures. If you are new here and would like to learn more about ABC Adventures and how to join in, please see the information at the end of this post.

This week, we continued doing activities for the letter S. However, instead of focusing on stars, we focused on spiders and dramatic play with a pretend store.

The first spider craft which we did was painting our own spider webs. This is a really toddler friendly craft. All you need is a box, black construction paper, white paint, a marble, and a toy spider. Place the black construction paper in the box, squirt some white paint on the paper and tilt the box to roll the marble around. Connor liked doing this so much that he painted about four spider webs. Once the paintings are dry stick on a plastic spider.

The next spider craft was also very easy to do – a handprint spider. Start of by tracing both the left and right hands of your child. Then, cut the hands out and glue them together with the thumbs facing up and sightly overlapping. Lastly, glue on some googly eyes. After we completed this craft, Connor wanted to create a footprint spider. Unfortunately, using Connor’s feet was not as successful as his handprints.

The highlight of our week was our pretend store. Instead of setting up a grocery store, we created a store which sold different types of food such as pizza, ice-creams, and lollipops. Connor really enjoyed being the shopkeeper. If someone bought a slice of pizza, he would ask them what topping they wanted – capsicum, onions, or mushrooms. If I said that I would like mushrooms, he would ignore my request and still add other toppings. I didn’t really mind this as the pizza was always delicious and a bargain as it only cost a dollar. The ice-creams and lollipops were also a dollar each. At one point, while I was trying to decide what I was going to purchase, he decided to eat the items that were for sale himself.  

 

That’s it from us for this week. If you have done any letter activities this week, link up and share your ABC Adventures!

Here is some more information and guidelines for ABC Adventures:

1. ABC Adventures is open to anyone with a blog that wants to join us by linking up to their current weekly letter activities.
2. In order to make browsing as easy as possible, please link to your individual ABC Adventures post instead of to your home page.
3. When you add your link please include the name of your blog and the letter of the alphabet that you learned about during the past week. For example, United Teaching (Letter A).
4. Although you are not required to use the ABC Adventures image you are more than welcome to do so by right clicking on the image, saving to your hard drive and uploading to your post the same way you would a picture. Please do not create a banner of your own. ABC Adventures images and the code to use is located here.
5. Please mention ABC Adventures in your post and link back to my weekly ABC Adventures post here at United Teaching.

Sorting Plastic Easter Eggs by Size and Easter Egg Visual Discrimination

We did two more Easter activities today. The first activity was one where we again used our plastic Easter Eggs. Our local shops had these eggs available in two sizes so Connor sorted them according to whether they were big or small.

The next activity was really easy and quick to create and a great exercise in visual discrimination. I purchased two sets of these gorgeous Easter egg stickers and had Connor match the designs on the eggs.    

 

Sorting Plastic Easter Eggs

This is a quick Easter activity I prepared today for Connor. To teach him the concept of ‘full’ and ‘empty’, I filled our plastic eggs with yellow chicks. He had to sort the eggs into two baskets depending on whether the egg was full or empty. To decide whether an egg was full or empty, Connor shook the egg and listened to whether the egg made any noise. At the end of the sort, which he did four times, Connor was allowed to open the eggs to see what was inside. He loved finding the little yellow chicks!

We are also going to be using these eggs to learn the concept of ‘heavy’ and ‘light’. Instead of leaving half the eggs empty, I am planning to fill them with a large marble and then have Connor sort them into their respective baskets.

How are you going to be using your plastic eggs this Easter season?

Tot School

 

Connor is 28 months old and Sarah is 9 months old

The dominant themes for the past week have been our Letter S and Easter activities. As well as doing the Easter Treasure Hunt and the Easter Bunny Tangrams, Connor completed an Easter Bunny puzzle. He wasn’t impressed when Sarah tried to help him and started requesting that Sarah go away.

After reading Peter Rabbit’s Happy Easter, Connor was also really keen to have a go at painting Easter eggs. I bought a packet of Styrofoam eggs and allowed him to paint them the way Peter Rabbit did – with all the colours of the rainbow. These eggs will be used to decorate our Easter tree. I love the photo where he is concentrating.

 

This week, Connor continued to experiment with his Perspex painting board. He is still stamping and has also started using paint scrapers.

Finally, pegging has become a favourite pastime. Connor isn’t content with just pegging items on his personal clothesline. He also enjoys attaching pegs to clothing that people are wearing. It is not unusual for me to be walking around with pegs attached to my tops and pants.

  

ABC Adventures – Letter S Part 1

Welcome to our ABC Adventures. If you are new here and would like to learn more about ABC Adventures and how to join in, please see the information at the end of this post.

This week was one which was full of crafts and Connor loved every activity. I began by introducing the letter S. However, instead of doing the original planned craft S if for snakes, we decided to do S is for stars. Connor and I found these gorgeous stars in our local craft store and knew we had to use them on our letter S.

After introducing the letter S, we moved on to our star crafts. The first star craft was a shooting star. I cut out a yellow star out of cardstock and gave Connor the collage kit so he could decorate the star in whatever way he pleased. He chose to use pom poms, more stars, and silver glitter. At the end we attached three strips of crepe paper to turn the star into a shooting star.

Connor also painted the night sky using the crayon resist technique. I drew the stars with a white crayon and he painted over them using black paint. Once the stars appeared he became quite excited but then the novelty wore off and, he didn’t want to paint over the rest of the page to see the remaining stars.

Another painting activity that Connor did was straw painting. It was quite funny watching him trying to blow through the straw to spread the paint. Even though he managed to spread the paint, a fair bit of saliva ended up coming through the straw too.

Away from the craft table, Connor sorted socks. At the beginning this was really helpful but after a while, Connor decided that it would be more fun trying other people’s socks on. In the end, not only did I have to finish sorting the socks, but I also had to find missing socks which had been scattered around the house.

After all our hard work, we enjoyed some spider snacks.

That’s it from us for this week. If you have done any letter activities this week, link up and share your ABC Adventures!

Here is some more information and guidelines for ABC Adventures:

1. ABC Adventures is open to anyone with a blog that wants to join us by linking up to their current weekly letter activities.
2. In order to make browsing as easy as possible, please link to your individual ABC Adventures post instead of to your home page.
3. When you add your link please include the name of your blog and the letter of the alphabet that you learned about during the past week. For example, United Teaching (Letter A).
4. Although you are not required to use the ABC Adventures image you are more than welcome to do so by right clicking on the image, saving to your hard drive and uploading to your post the same way you would a picture. Please do not create a banner of your own. ABC Adventures images and the code to use is located here.
5. Please mention ABC Adventures in your post and link back to my weekly ABC Adventures post here at United Teaching.

Easter Bunny Tangrams

 

 

Puzzles are still a big deal around here. So, to continue some of our Easter activities, I prepared some Easter Bunny Tangrams for Connor to try. Tangrams are an ancient Chinese puzzle, consisting of seven geometrical pieces that form thousands of designs. The Family Fun website has some Easter Bunny Tangrams ready for you to download and use with your children.

This is the first time Connor has been given a tangram. To make it easy for him, I printed the Easter Bunny designs and drew in the solutions.

 

At first, Connor found it a little confusing. However, after I demonstrated how the puzzles are completed, he went for it.

One thing which I am going to do to improve this activity is to create the designs to match the size of our tangram pieces. The size of the pieces is what Connor found most confusing. Having the opportunity to match the pieces to the actual design will make it easier for him to get the hang of completing tangram puzzles.

Easter Treasure Hunt

This week, we have begun some of the activities I have planned for Easter. Firstly, I read to Connor the book Peter Rabbit's Happy Easterby Grace Maccarone. This book tells the story of how Peter Rabbit became the Easter Bunny. We found the book at our local library and, as we have been reading many of the Beatrix Potter stories to Connor over the past couple of weeks, I thought it was a perfect book to lead into our Easter activities.

The story itself tied into the original story of how Peter Rabbit lost his blue jacket and how he wanted to make it up to his Mother. Thinking it will please his Mother, Peter Rabbit collects eggs from his neighbours to give to her. Peter accidentally knocks over several jars of paint and the eggs are splashed with all the colours of the rainbow. When Peter Rabbit gives the eggs to Mother Rabbit, she is not pleased and instructs Peter to return the eggs. After Peter returns the eggs, the children of the neighbourhood find the eggs. Consequently, Peter Rabbit becomes the Easter Bunny.

Connor has absolutely loved this story and we have read the book at least once a day over the past week or so. It is a perfect story for young children.

 

After we read the book, I created an Easter Treasure Hunt box for Connor. This consisted of a plastic tub filled with rice and hidden glass eggs and baby chicks. To make the search more interesting, I provided Connor with a wire spoon for sifting and placing his finds in another container. When he found all the Easter treasures, he began placing them back into the tub of rice so he could do it again. This is definitely an activity I will be repeating.

  

Happy St. Patrick’s Day

Wishing everyone a Happy St. Patrick’s Day!