Spring Displays!

Drop-In and Get Crafty: Spring

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!

 

Family Storytime: Bunnies

I was supposed to do the bunny theme the week before, but the area had a terrible rain storm with hail so no one ended up making Family Storytime. It was such an odd feeling because I never had that happen before, but the weather was really terrible. Anyway, I had the bunny theme all ready to go so I decided to carry the theme over to this week. 

How can you have a bunny storytime without mentioning their favorite food...carrots? Our first book was Too Many Carrots by Katy Hudson. This is a silly, fun book about sharing and what ends up happening if you don't. 

For a flannel story, I told a tale about bunny tails. It's about a fluffy, white bunny who ends up getting his tail dirty while playing outside. It's brown from the dirt, and he wants his tail back to normal but doesn't know which color it should be. Should it be blue like the sky during the day or black like the sky at night? Should it be green like the grass? The kids like saying the colors and telling me if that's the right color for Bunny's tail. 

Our next book told us what bunnies dream about in Bunny Dreams by Peter McCarty.

What an imaginative book! The kids took a real interest to this one.

We did a short "Five Little Bunnies" counting rhyme using the flannel board that got us counting as a group.

Our final book was Cat & Bunny by Mary Lundquist. I found the illustrations adorable and the message of including everyone during playtime charming. Some in the group liked pointing out who was Cat and who was Bunny. 

For our craft, we made bunnies out of Styrofoam cups and added a cotton ball for a bunny cotton tail. We did a variation on this craft by using a full bunny face printout instead of the kids drawing the face on because I knew it would work out better for my group. They really liked this craft!

Preschool Picasso: Easter

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!