Crafts and Activities

We are loving doing Easter crafts. The kids are planning to decorate the house for our annual Easter bash. So far, they have their Tape Resist Easter Crosses ready to hang up and they were eager to create something else to add to the decor.

To create these, you will need:

• paper (we used fingerpaint paper)
• paint (we used acrylics)
• paintbrushes
• bubble wrap
• scissors

I bought our bubble wrap and fingerpaint paper at the dollar store which made this a very inexpensive project as well.

I cut the bubble wrap into squares. We began with the full papers. The kids painted the squares of bubble wrap using paintbrushes and then stamped them onto their papers. Some of the younger kids had a hard time managing to hold the square of bubble wrap and paint it at the same time so I painted for them and they stamped.

After the paint dried, we cut the papers into the shape of large Easter eggs. It was a challenge for some of my sensory seeking kids not to give in to the temptation to press down too hard and pop the bubbles in the bubble wrap! They waited until we were finished with the squares before they gave in to the urge to pop all the bubbles.

If you are looking for other Easter ideas, you may be interested in following my Easter board on Pinterest.

A few weeks ago, The Husband and I went away on a getaway to Arizona. While we were there, we visited a Celebration of Fine Art, which was an amazing display of 100 artists. Many of the artists were there creating as we watched and we were able to ask questions and find out more about their process. It was interesting and inspiring!

One of the artists we spoke to was William Barnhart. We were in awe of one of his sculptures and found his other work quite fascinating. This artwork is something our family worked on together and it was inspired by his style of paintings. He uses black outlines and bright colours to create almost a stained glass effect. He has done figure studies and this is evident in his work. We went with those concepts to create our own artwork inspired by his.

I bought black puffy fabric paint and a large foam board at the dollar store and lay out some designs using the puffy paint. In keeping with the art I was inspired by, I made sure there were some figures that could be made out but kept most of it ambiguous.

We let the puffy paint dry overnight because I wanted to be absolutely sure it didn’t smudge. When we were ready to complete our piece, it happened to be a Saturday, so even The Husband got in on the painting. It was a very relaxing family morning and we are so pleased with the results!

The only instruction we gave the kids was to use bright colours and their imaginations. We used acrylic paint for our artwork but tempera or oil would work as well. We let them experiment with mixing their own colours. Sometimes they chose to paint an entire area between the black borders one colour while other times they created their own colour lines within one section.

I love the bright colours! We are planning on hanging this piece in our entryway and are quite proud of our first family collaborative artwork!

I am so happy with the way these turned out! I imagined them a certain way in my head but my ideas don’t always translate that well in reality so I was pleasantly surprised when these were even better than I had envisioned!

This Easter art project is very easy to make. Materials needed:

• paper (we used fingerpaint paper)
• plastic eggs
• masking or painter’s tape (we used masking tape)
• paint (we used acrylic)

Using the masking or painter’s tape, mark a cross on your paper. Open the plastic eggs and dip one half in paint. It is easiest to use the same colour egg as paint so that you can re-use without having to wash the paint off in between. Stamp the egg onto the paper. When the paint is dry, carefully revealing a cross underneath the tape.

This is one of those sneaky activities where your kids are learning and not realizing it. It is a great colour matching activity as they can dip the same coloured egg into the paint colours. It’s also excellent fine motor practise using the rounded eggs.

These pictures make beautiful decorations for Easter. My kids really enjoyed making these. Snuggle Puppy asked right away if we could hang them up for people to see at Easter time.

We used medium sized plastic eggs for our art but you could easily use the large or small size or a combination of sizes to create different looks.

This Easter art activity would be great to do in a group such as in a Sunday school class or at an Easter celebration. If you are looking for similar activities, you may want to follow my Christ-centered Easter board on Pinterest.

Craftulate has a great series, The Ultimate Guide to 50 Craft Materials, 50 days of crafts and activities featuring different materials. I’m honoured to be able to participate but was quite honestly wondering what I was thinking choosing cups as my material. I asked myself, “why couldn’t I have chosen foam sheets or googly eyes or pipe cleaners?” but once I started to give it some thought, I realized that not only was it easy to come up with new ideas, there are several crafts and activities that we’ve done in the past that have used cups.

Cups are actually a very versatile craft material and something that many people already have on hand. Here are just some of the many cup crafts and activities that are possible. There is also a link-up below for you to add your own cup crafts.

We made plastic cup butterflies earlier this week. We taped red heart shaped doilies to the back, poked pipe cleaners through the top for the antennae and used eye stickers and a Sharpie marker for the face. You could also use googly eyes.

The kids made Monsters using green cups, googly eyes, eye stickers, Sharpie markers, and pipe cleaners. It’s always neat to see how different each of the finished products turn out.

When we created a backyard Olympics, one of the crafts we made was the Olympic rings with cups and paint.

At Snuggle Puppy’s pirate themed birthday party last year, the kids all made hooks using cups and tin foil. This is simple but so fun!

For our Rainbow Theme unit, I made layered jello in cups.

We also used plastic cups in three of the games at our Minute to Win It Family Fun Night. They were easy games but so fun!

Meaningful Mama has a really great activity for teaching beginning reading using plastic cups.

This fire cup knock down game from Lalymom was for their Fire Prevention Week.

Craftulate has a unique idea to create ornaments with plastic cups.

Meaningful Mama has used a science experiment using cups to teach the character trait of flexibility.

These make your own constellations from KC Edventures are such a great way to make learning fun!

Craftulate used cups to help in teaching colour sorting.

Be sure to check out all the craft material posts to get ideas on how to use other common craft materials. If you are looking for creative ideas for kids, you may also be interested in following my Kids Activities Board on Pinterest.