Easter Play & Craft Activities

It’s not long until Easter and with another week in lock-down ahead of us, Easter themed activities are the perfect way to keep the kids busy! Here’s a round up of some of the play and craft ideas that we love at this time of year.

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I love making our Easter celebrations extra special with lots of play and craft. And this year it seems especially important as all of our usual activities and gatherings with friends and family won’t be happening.

There’s still so many ways we can build special memories, introduce fun family traditions and explore the Easter story with our kids from the safety of our homes.

I hope the activities below provide a bit of inspiration for you. Many use household items, but any additional resources featured can usually be found via my online Amazon storefronts.

In amongst the cute crafts and Easter play we also love to share the Easter story! The Seriously Surprising Story from the Bible Society explains it so well for children. You can watch the animated version below.

And if you’d like a home-based Easter Egg Hunt you can download our free printable by subscribing here.

Easter Play & Craft Activities

Easter Play Dough

We love play dough and had such fun with this Easter play dough invitation last year! Home made play dough is so easy to make and is so much nicer than shop bought stuff! Find our play dough recipe here.

To make pastel colours like these, just add a very small amount of food colouring to each batch. You can find these play dough cutters linked in my Amazon storefronts.

Chick Small World Play

If you have any of these cute little chicks that are everywhere at Easter why not set up a little world for them. Small world play is great for encouraging story telling and imaginative play!

Easter Bunnies with Nature

Often the best activities are free! Why not have a scavenge in the garden or on your daily walk and collect some things from nature. Then use it to make some cute bunny pictures!

Pompom & Easter Egg Tray

My kids have loved playing with this tray full of pom-poms and plastic Easter Eggs. There’s so many opportunities to practice counting and teach number in this set up. Add some scoops and tools and it’s also brilliant for practicing fine motor skills.

Shaving Foam Easter Egg Wreath

Shaving foam and food colouring is one our favourite art processes. Tap the arrow on the photo to see all of the steps.

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SHAVING FOAM EASTER EGG WREATH . I love shaving foam art because it’s an activity that works well for all ages- perfect for our current situation! . And for little ones that can’t quite access the printing part it’s still an amazing sensory experience to play in the shaving foam! . My tips are to have a towel ready and somewhere close by to wash hands and wash the trays down. Shaving foam is messy but relatively painless to clean up! . This is the process… . 1. Add drops of food colouring to the shaving foam in your chosen colours. I diluted gel food colouring with a bit of water for this but liquid food colouring or liquid watercolours would be ideal. . 2. Use the end of a pencil or paintbrush to make patterns with the food colouring or leave it as blobs of colour (each will achieve a different look) . 3. Next place a piece of photo paper or card on top of the shaving foam and press it down gently. . 4. Once the paper is covered in shaving foam lay it face up on a tray and scrape off the excess using a ruler. . You should be left with a beautiful, unique pattern every time 🥰 . You can have a few goes at this before needing to add a bit more food colouring. We did several trays of shaving foam with different colour food colouring each time. . Once everything is dry cut out the Easter eggs and string them up with ribbon. Alternatively you could make bunting or Easter cards. . I suggest buying shaving cream from the supermarket- if you buy own brand it should be very cheap. Droppers are inexpensive too on Amazon and one of our staple resources we use a lot. You can find the link in my Amazon affiliate shop (Link in my bio) . . . . . . #earlylearning101 #learningthroughplay #playideas #playathome #letthemplay #playmatters #earlyyears #earlylearning #playislearning #preschoolplay #preschoolactivity #eyfs #eyfsideas #diymum #creativeplay #artforkids #craftykids #preschoolcraft #craftforkids #papercraft #creativekids #kidsatplay #earlychildhoodeducation #inspiremyplay #schoolclosureplay #schoolclosure #homeschool

A post shared by Laura @inspiremyplay (@inspiremyplay) on Mar 19, 2020 at 1:23pm PDT

Easter Cutting Tray

I set up this cutting tray for my 4 year old last week and it was such a hit! She spent ages cutting these up and returned several times! It’s a great way of using up scraps of paper and practicing cutting skills at the same time!

Easter Garden

Every year we make an Easter garden as a way of exploring the Easter Story. For this one we used a flowerpot and stone to show the empty tomb and bound some twigs together to make a cross. We then gathered lots of foliage and flowers to make a beautiful garden.

Magnetic Easter Eggs

Hide some magnetic letters or numbers in plastic eggs and they become ‘magnetic’! Great for a little treasure hunt or ‘lucky dip’ activity.

Pom-pom Painting

Clipping pom-poms to pegs is a fun way of doing art. Either draw lines across the egg to follow or leave it completely blank for them to design their own. For more precise designs you could also do this with q-tips (cotton-wool buds).

Tin Foil Chicks

These little chicks are so easy to make using scrunched up tinfoil. Paint pieces of kitchen towel and once dry rip into small pieces before gluing onto the tinfoil body. Add a beak, eyes and feet to finish off your cute chick.

Wooden Easter Egg Decorating

These gorgeous wooden eggs are linked in my Amazon storefronts. Last year we had a lovely time decorating them with acrylic paint pens and then using the eggs for an Easter Egg Hunt.

Easter Pebble Painting

We love pebble painting! You can paint on pebbles using acrylic paint pens. We recommend Posca Pens for older kids and adults, and the Colorful Art Co. as a cheaper brand with chunky tips for little ones. Other alternatives are to use paint sticks or ready-mixed paint, though the colours won’t be quite as vibrant.

There’s so many ways you could paint pebbles at Easter time. Why not paint some Easter Eggs and hide them around the garden for an Easter Egg hunt? Or paint some little chicks. You could also make some Easter story stones to use to retell the Easter Story.

Sticky Easter Eggs

This has been such a popular idea over the past few years! This activity uses a piece of contact paper (sticky-backed plastic) stuck onto a cardboard surround, with an egg shape cut out. Draw lines over the egg using a permanent marker and provide a selection of craft supplies to decorate the egg. This activity is great for developing fine motor skills.

Easter Nests

This is a classic Easter Activity! Find the instructions on the BBC Good Food Website.

Easter Egg Sun Catchers

We were so pleased with these beautiful Easter sun-catchers! Tap the arrow to see each step of the process.

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EASTER EGG SUN-CATCHERS . Today we made these Easter egg sun-catchers to brighten up our windows. It’s a simple craft that can be adapted for different aged children. . To make these start with a rectangle of contact paper (sticky-back plastic) with the sticky side facing upwards. . Tear tissue paper into strips. This should be fairly easy as long as you tear the tissue paper in the right direction (just experiment!). Littler ones might need a bit of help with this. . Stick them in overlapping rows until the contact paper is completely covered. . At this point you could stick another piece of contact paper on top of the tissue paper to seal it in but I don’t think it’s essential. . Finally turn the contact paper over and draw an egg shape on the back before cutting it out. . A simpler version for the little ones is just to cut up squares of tissue paper and let them stick it to the contact paper. Miss 2 did an example for you if you swipe through 😄 . This lovely floral tissue paper came from Flying Tiger (before lockdown) but I’ve managed to find a few options that I’ve popped into my Amazon affiliate store if you’re interested. It’s under craft supplies, along with normal tissue paper and contact paper. . . . . . #earlylearning101 #learningthroughplay #playideas #playathome #letthemplay #playmatters #earlyyears #earlylearning #playislearning #preschoolplay #preschoolactivity #eyfs #eyfsideas #diymum #creativeplay #artforkids #craftykids #preschoolcraft #craftforkids #papercraft #creativekids #kidsatplay #earlychildhoodeducation #inspiremyplay #schoolclosureplay #schoolclosure #homeschool

A post shared by Laura @inspiremyplay (@inspiremyplay) on Mar 31, 2020 at 12:30pm PDT

Pom-pom Animals

My 6 year old made these cute pom-pom animals. We used two different sized pom-pom makers (linked in my Amazon storefront), but you can also use a couple of cardboard disks instead. You can watch a useful tutorial here.

Easter Tablecloth

It has become a bit of a tradition of ours to make a tablecloth to use on Easter Sunday. For this particular one I drew eggs all over the paper cloth and then the girls decorated them using q-tips. The girls spent ages on this project and each one was so unique! If you can’t get hold of a paper tablecloth you could make a table runner using a roll of paper or make Easter placemats.

I hope you found a few ideas to help you out this week! Don’t forget to download out free printable. Click below for the details.