Easter Wobbles

Easter has almost gone and you're left with a pile of chocolate and loads of plastic eggs. I think we all know how to get rid of the chocolate, but what to do with the plastic eggs?

 

 We had a fun morning making the plastic eggs into 'weebles'.

 Do you remember the plastic toys from the 70's and 80's, 

'Weebles wobble, but they don't fall down'.

 We opened up the egg and placed a small blob of plastacine in the base.

There's a good amount of science involved to get the egg to balance. Not enough or too much and it falls over, and also the plasticine has to be in the right position to get the egg to stand upright without leaning.

 Spin the egg, push it and it will wobble, but remain upright.

 

 Then decorate the egg, add a face, hair, let your imagination run wild!

 Some of our creations...

 What can we do with the weebles?

 Give them a house and a life.

The children created this house out of an old kitchen unit. A whole new world evolved. The Easter family - they celebrate Easter everyday! Have you heard the songs 'I wish it could be Easter everyday', 'The Easter bunny is coming to town'? It's amazing to see the transformation from simple plastic eggs to a full story. I think of it as literacy in 3 dimensions.

Coldest Easter on record

Despite today being the coldest Easter Sunday on record, 

Reuben and Rosanna still wanted an Easter egg hunt in the garden.

 Off we went for our first ever snowy Easter egg hunt.

 

 The hens had been very clever laying lovely colourful eggs...

 Have you noticed the older girls are missing? 

They were inside knitting with Nanan.

Anyone at home?

  A cautious peek...

At last Reuben found his big Easter egg, 

and thankfully we could go inside and have a hot cup of tea!

Happy Easter

x

Easy Easter crafts and decorations

Over the past couple of days we've been busy with Easter crafts, 

and we made enough to decorate the window...

Our Easter window.

I made the Easter wreath, from a wire coat hanger shaped into a circle and strips of material.

It's very quick and easy to make, at this point I was doubting it would look anything like a wreath, but I kept on adding strips and pushing them tight and it soon took shape.

I bought these polystrene eggs from poundland.

We decorated them with wool, we found that it's best to put blobs of PVA glue on to the egg and then wind the wool around, we tried different ways, side-to-side, random and length ways. We found winding the wool length ways around the egg was easiest. We added a few strands of wool and then left it to dry, this acted as a key for the rest of the wool.

The finished eggs, my favourite is the orange egg, this wool was thicker and fluffy and stuck down really easily.

Also using the polystyrene eggs we added layers of tissue paper, let them dry and them Jemima decorated them with painted flowers.

This is a larger decoupage egg, which stands on the window sill.

We used toilet paper tubes.

We painted them and left them to dry.

Some were left whole and made into rabbits.

Others were cut into three pieces and made into a chick and a frog. 

I wonder if a creme egg would fit into the tummy of the chick.

Easter + snow = snow flake Easter eggs!

Using this cardboard box from our new Hetty vacuum cleaner, 

we have started...

 an Easter wonderland!

Imogen is knitting Easter bunnies...

They are big enough to fit a chocolate egg 

or real egg if you are being healthy!

 I feel as though the spirit of Easter is lost with the piles of cheap Easter eggs in the supermarkets. So I've started making little gifts for the children.

 I've filled these cellophane bags with their favourite pick 'n' mix and then added paper chick details.

They haven't cost much to make.

I also bought the children's favourite chocolate and wrapped it and added rabbit details. Much cheaper than an Easter egg.

But I'm sure I'll give in to the mountains of £1 Easter eggs on offer.

Reuben and Rosanna are really enjoying playing with the Easter things we have made. They especially love these Easter decorations on a stick,which I got form poundland. They make brilliant wands and pretend knitting needles to sit and knit with Immy.

Easter window complete, we'll now move onto decorating the fireplace...

The Easter Story in a jar

A couple of weeks ago, we went to a workshop and made a story in a jar,

 this inspired us to make the Easter story in a jar.

We started by reading the Easter story from a children's bible.

We then started planning the jar using words and drawing pictures. It's very interesting to see which parts the children saw as significant.

 Then the decorating began.

 

 The girls used the newspaper to find descriptive words.

They found some really interesting powerful descriptive words, which we may not have thought of, such as, incredibly alone, tainted, protector, abuse.

 

 Jemima decorated the edge of the jar with a crown of thorns.

 We read the bible story of the widow and the coins, 

Reuben focused on this, sticking coins to the jar.

Reuben also made a cross out of nails to go into the jar.

 Imogen's jar with three nails, two for the hands and one for the feet.

 

 I then gave the girls a small piece of paper to summarise the Easter story.

The finished jars.