Easter Eggs!

The girls had fun coloring eggs this morning.

Easter Craft: Paper Butterflies

We tried our hand at making paper butterflies this week. I found the idea on WomansDay.com. Though, I had trouble getting the template, so basically we went on our own with it.

I used scrapbooking paper instead of origami paper. I folded the paper in half, then in half again. Then I drew my own butterfly to cut out.

After cutting the paper we ended up with two butterfly shapes. We glued these together so that both sides of the butterfly would have the purple pattern on them.

The last step was to add a pipe cleaner for the body and antenna.

Abigail made one too (with a little help from Mommy).

Easter Craft: Stained Glass Cross

Today's craft was yet another I had to try as soon as I saw it: an Easter Stained Glass Cross.

When I looked over the directions I had a really hard time understanding them. So, I ended up doing things "my" way. Looking back on it, I probably wouldn't have had to do so much cleaning up work at the end if I had understood and followed the directions.

Here's a quick description of what we did.

1. Cut the cross and cross openings out of construction paper. After cutting out the cross I folded it in half (long ways first, then top to bottom) so I could easily and evenly cut out the openings:


2. Attach cross to the sticky side of contact paper.

3. Tear tissue paper into small pieces and attach to exposed contact paper. The girls were into tearing the paper. Abigail and I did most of the attaching while Sarah played with torn up tissue paper.

4. Trim excess contact paper.

5. Trim excess tissue paper. I ended up using an exact-o knife (this is probably an extra step I wouldn't have had to do if I had understood and followed the instructions).

6. Hang up! I didn't get the whole contact paper thing at first-why not just attach white paper and glue the tissue paper? The contact paper allowed for light to shine through to the colorful paper.

This is probably a craft more suited to older children, but it was still fun and I am happy with the results.

Easter Craft: Yarn Eggs

We made another Easter craft this week. As I was searching for creative ideas I knew I wanted to try this one as soon as I saw it. This week Abigail and I made Yarn Eggs.

I'll start off by saying that I don't think this craft was intended for 3 year olds, no matter how much supervision. Abigail was more interested in attempting to blow up balloons than actually doing the craft. Plus, every time a little bit of the glue solution got on her fingers she would wipe it off on her shirt, the table, you name it.

They still turned out though, so I think I'll make a couple more and hang them on our front door. We may make a couple for the girls' door too.

Easter Craft: Cotton Ball Lamb

We made our first Easter craft today. It is one of 40 lent activities we'll be doing. This one was pretty straight-forward and really easy for Abigail to do, though, I wish it would have occupied more of her time. Today we made a Cotton Ball Lamb.

We didn't have any paper plates, so I used cardboard that was packaged with a frozen pizza (I cut it a bit to make it smaller).

You'll notice Abigail is wearing pajamas. These weren't the ones she wore last night. In fact, I think these pajamas were maybe the third thing Abigail changed into today (and we made this craft at 9:00 AM)!

Lent Calendar

As a stay-at-home-mom I often lose track of what day it is, or when holidays come up. Case-in-point, I didn't realize lent started yesterday until I saw twitter comments about "Fat Tuesday" on Tuesday. I wracked my brain (and the internet) to see if I could come up with any Lent/Easter activities to help the girls understand Easter more and also count the days in anticipation of the holiday.

So, I decided on an "Easter Calendar" where we would mark each of the 40 days of lent with a decorated egg. Each egg represents a different Easter-related activity. I spent my free time Tuesday night constructing the calendar for the girls to see in the morning.

Some of the activities are simple, like watching an Easter movie or reading the Easter story in their Bible story book. Others are crafty (I'll share more on those when we get to them). When we get to 12 days before we'll have a special egg hunt each day to find one a dozen Resurrection Eggs.

I know the girls won't remember a lot of what we do (or even understand all of it), but it should give us something different to do for Lent. Plus, if things go well we may try it again next year.