In celebration of spring, I usually have a drop-in craft. We made bunnies. The drop-ins seem to always have a good turnout and I usually hold them on days when the kids are off of school or weekends.
I had some leftover bunny crafts from storytime and offered those and some coloring pages to anyone who would like to stay and do some more crafting.
I used cloud die-cuts cut in half for bunny paws and an egg template and bunny face template for the rest of bunny's body.
Everyone's bunny turned out cute and one-of-a-kind.
Happy Spring!
This year's Drop-In and Get Crafty: Easter was held on a no school day. I had a nice turnout and ended up continuing the program for an extra hour. Families came in rather sporadically, instead of the usual all rushing in when it starts, which made the room less crowded.
For the craft, the group colored an Easter egg coloring page and cut and glued them onto a paper plate to make a colorful, holiday-themed wreath. There were sequins and bows to jazz it up. This was a great craft since this group loves to color! They enjoyed sparkling it up with sequins, and pastel yarn was available to use to hang up their wreath.
It was neat to see how each child's wreath turned out different and some of the parents even took part.
I usually keep the same themes for Preschool Picasso and Toddler Art and this month was no exception. I went with an Easter theme and the group embraced the egg, bunny, and carrot crafts. What a way to celebrate the beginning of spring!
For our first craft, we each decorated our own card stock cut-out egg using q-tips and pink, purple, and yellow washable paint. For some of the kids, this was their first time using q-tips to paint with so that was nice to see. We all had our own unique decorated eggs with dots and squiggly lines.
Next, I re-used the bunny craft idea from Preschool Picasso and we had made some more cute bunnies with spring cookie cutters complete with a cotton ball tail.
For our last craft of the day, we made carrots so our bunnies could have something to eat later. I had some leftover orange tissue paper from a Halloween pumpkin craft that I used to cut squares so the kids could glue it onto their carrot. They had a green die-cut hand print to glue to the top to make the stem of the carrot. The group loved playing with the tissue paper and some in the group pretended to eat their carrots.
The sensory bin was a hit! I reused the sensory bin from Preschool Picasso, but added some plastic carrots I found at the local dollar store so the group could pretend to be bunnies looking for carrots and eggs. They enjoyed shifting through the grass and finding stickers in the eggs.
The q-tips, cookie cutters, and tissue paper all played into their fine motor skills while having fun with paint and crafting.
Now onto deciding what theme to go with for the next Preschool Picasso and Toddler Art programs.
There are so many great Easter craft ideas out there that I decided I had to do that theme for Preschool Picasso!
Originally, I was going to use the book The Night Before Easter by Natasha Wing, but I wanted to make sure I didn't offend any parents with an Easter theme so I made sure most of my focus was on bunnies and I picked the funny, action-packed picture book Warning! Do Not Touch! by Tim Warnes instead. This book does not disappoint and my group really enjoyed this one. It's also the perfect length for a program where you want to do one story that is not too long and not too short. The kids all laughed when the alligator in the story is referred to as the "Lumpy-Bumpy Thing."
For our first craft, we made Easter egg baskets. I used card stock and printed a basket template on them. The kids glued brown strips of construction paper onto the basket and dipped oval shaped brushes (potato scrubbers) in blue, purple, pink, and yellow paint and pressed them onto their paper to make eggs. This craft worked out well and was a bonus that I had the potato scrubbers from a previous craft to use instead of having to go out and buy sponges.
For our final craft, we painted bunnies. I had cutout bunnies out of tan construction paper and bought some Easter cookie cutters. The kids dipped their cookie cutters in paint and pressed them onto the bunny to make designs. They also used their fingers or paint brushes and glued a cotton ball on his bottom to make a cute, fluffy tail. All of the bunnies looked unique and the kids had a good time using paint twice.
I had a sensory bin filled with different colored Easter grass and plastic eggs at the bottom. It was a mini egg hunt and they each found an egg with a sticker inside, however; most of the group had left by then.
I had such a nice turnout that I had to scramble and make a few more crafts last minute, but everything worked out. I prepared 25 crafts even though I have 15 registered, but I knew some bring siblings and I had a few drop-ins. The more the merrier! I plan on making sure I have 30 crafts available for next time. It was such a busy, fun time that I didn't realize until afterwards that I forgot to do our bean bag song. The group didn't seem to miss it this time and the longer book made up for that anyway.
Overall, we had such a fun time and the kids did a great job listening to the story and completing their artwork. I'm thinking I'll be keeping this theme for Toddler Art and of course for my Drop-In and Get Crafty program.
Happy Easter!
Here's the latest bulletin board display I put together. We have a lot of other work going on, so it isn't as elaborate or homemade as my last bulletin board, but I like how it turned out and I can keep it up for a while since things are busy.
Spring will soon be here!
