Ten Great Easter Activities for Tots

We love marking the seasons, creating new traditions and reviving the old, learning about the Church's year and discovering the rhythms of nature together. Here are ten great Lent and Easter Activities the girls have really enjoyed over the last two years:

1. Lent normally starts somewhere around Valentine's Day and Culturetot in particular loved her themed sensory basket. I found a set of measuring cups in the shape of hearts and threw in a base of Risotto rice, foil and satin confetti, dried flower petals, feathers, wooden hearts and - the absolute winner - pom poms of various shapes and sizes. Culturetot really enjoyed scooping and pouring, sorting the items, collecting the pom poms and stacking the cups. All great for sensory awareness, fine motor development and colour matching practice.

2. I make seasonal play baskets for the girls too - the first of these was for Easter last year, and it was so successful I've ensured that we have never been without one since. As we were flipping our pancakes this year we still had high hopes for snow and the promise of a snowman-building day, which has now completely eluded us for the last two years. We compensated by allowing Peter Rabbit and his friends to continue their adventures in our winter snowscape as long as possible and then swiftly replaced the chilly scene with an Easter themed discovery basket. The last two years this has revolved around the theme of spring, Easter and the cycle of life. Last year I started with an aesthetic grass base and added flowers and petals, rocks, feathers, eggs and baby animals for Culturebaby to discover and play with, along with some clips for fine motor practice. This year the theme is more yellow and nest-like with a wide variety of eggs, chicks, nests, feathers and, Culturetot's favourite: pompoms. I also added a favoured themed toy - the egg shape sorter for Culturetot.

3. I've found that Spring is such a perfect time to explore the theme of life cycles. We have six brilliant Safariology life-cycle model sets which come in four or five stages of a creature's development and encourage exploration, sorting and play. I buried the chicken models amidst the Easter sensory basket for Culturebaby to unearth and order. She's also been using a set of cheap opening eggs to create her own hatching chicks.

Last year I also set up a simple pond-like sensory play tub with the frog and turtle sets using a base of green water beads. This fun little resource (not for children who still mouth) are fun to grow from tiny beads with the addition of water, and they are slimy and squishable to the touch. Once the weather improved we also incorporated some of these little models in a spot of outdoor water play.

4. A really simple activity, either for a specific walk, or for any time you are out and about is to spot, photograph and identify spring flowers popping up. We've also been watching the snowdrops wane and make way for other shoots in our own garden. It's been an effective way to teach Culturebaby about flowers, new life and do a spot of revision myself.

5. We have a brilliant local art class for Tots in St Albans called Patchwork Penguin. Combining storytime, messy play and a range of opportunities to create art, the class also ensures that we get the chance to celebrate the seasons, explore favourite books and get messy in a way rather more tricky in the confines of a winter kitchen. It was also the first place Culturebaby learned, a couple of years ago, to sit down in a group and really concentrate on a collective story. Some of our Spring activities were particularly cute and provide a great source of ideas to try again at home. These chicks were made with sponges and a triangle of orange paper and sticky eye, were simple to create even for the smallest artist, and looked so effective. The daffodil was formed from shiny and tissue paper and part of an egg box.
 


6. One of the most accessible ways to learn about the journey from Lent to Easter for tots is through the simple story of the good shepherd, who loves each one of his animals so much that he is prepared to endure great perils to save even one. I wrote about how to create a simple story play set and a couple of great picture book versions of the story here.

 7. In the same post I also talked about how much we enjoyed creating our own Resurrection Garden for Holy Week, complete with live cress as grass and model characters. Over the course of the Easter Triduum we gradually changed the scene, as Jesus died; his friends and family mourned; and ultimately the empty tomb was discovered with Easter Sunday and the Resurrection. You can find further details about this activity and suggested picture book titles here.

8. We almost have a decorative tree for every season these days, but there is little more uplifting than a gorgeous blooming Easter bough decked with symbols of new life to brighten up the room. It's a new tradition for us as a family but one I adore. Paperchase in particular does some absolutely beautiful decorations. Selecting the branches and decorating the tree with our unbreakable items was a lovely shared experience for the family. I'm very much looking forward to doing the same again this year.

9. Themed colour sorting and counting activities are always a good way to engage both the girls in their various interests and provide a versatile material that can be used in different ways. Culturetot has really taken to these miniature wooden eggs, and has spent a lot of time sorting them and putting them into containers. Culturebaby has been using these eggs and a set of numbers to count the correct amounts of eggs into sections of a paint dish. This has really helped with her precision of counting as well as her numeral recognition.

10. One of the girls' favourite joint activities is creating imaginary culinary offerings, hosting picnics and tea parties. I love it when they use materials I have offered them in other contexts (such as our Easter sensory basket) in their own ways. The've been reminiscing about Shrove Tuesday and cooking up rather a few pancakes this week, complete with pom pom yokes. They've also been careering about the house brandishing their easter baskets and collecting a host of unlikely material. I've rarely seen them so occupied for such a long time. A bargain at £1 for a packet from Poundland.

Spring is Coming by Elisabeth Lebret

Spring is coming, spring is coming, birdies build your nest!

Weave together straw and feathers, doing each your best.

Spring is coming, spring is coming

Flowers are coming too.

Daisies, lilies, daffodillies

All are coming through!

Spring is coming, spring is coming 

all around is fair.   

Shimmer, glimmer on the river, joy is everywhere.

Disclaimer: The majority of ideas and materials are our own for these activities, with the exception of the fantastic Safariology models which were sent to us on request for a variety of activities and review purposes over the last year by Asobi Toys UK. We cannot recommend these educational items enough. As mentioned in a previous blog, the gorgeous resurrection garden idea came from this great blog post by The Encouraging Home, and the great Spring art ideas came from the clever and creative Jo at Patchwork Penguin. If you are St Albans based, this is a simply fabulous class for little ones.

An Innocent Lent

Last year was the first Lent that I really had to think about how best to explain the story of Easter to Culturebaby. It's a tricky one. Given that we adults struggle to fathom the mystery of salvation, I'm not sure a two year old can be expected to either. Furthermore, Culturebaby is an innocent. The sight of Pooh Bear, Piglet and pals lined up on the naughty step just makes me love my little lady more, particularly when she explains that Pooh scratched Piglet and he has to do two minutes and there'll be no television for him. Even though we have a naughty step and a marble jar to help Culturebaby take time out when she's being frantic or difficult, and reward spontaneous loveliness, toddlers are ultimately still impulsive in their reactions and they are entirely beautiful and good. It is therefore much more helpful, I believe, to talk to them about kindness and how to treat people, and tell stories about the unconditional love of God - even when we make mistakes. 

I've found that a rather lovely and accessible way to introduce the crucial ideas around infinite love and care, sacrifice and salvation is the simple parable of The Lost Sheep. Culturebaby loves imaginary play and little models. She also seems to be developing rather a theatrical penchant for acting stories out. With this in mind last year I created a simple play landscape for the lost sheep to venture across on his own, complete with perils for his master to overcome in carrying out his recovery. This was so simple to create just from materials and objects we already owned, and was more successful than I could have imagined. After numerous "again!"s and two versions of the tale with slightly different props, Culturebaby began to recount the story herself. We filmed it and watched it back, and I even overheard her acting it out to her soft toys from the other room as she settled down for a nap. The two excellent versions of the parable we use are the lighthearted version from Stories Jesus Told by Nick Butterworth and Mick Inkpen. This compilation is a current favourite with Culturebaby, who loves the simple moral tales re-told here in accessible form. We also really like the cut-out board book The Lost Sheep, which is slightly closer to the original and equally accessible.

 
Last year, towards the latter part of Lent, we also created a Resurrection Garden table centrepiece that I'd seen on another blog and loved. The model presents calvary and the tomb; complete with stone blocking the entrance, which can be rolled away to reveal the empty tomb and figurines. This was extremely simple to make and was a helpful way to act out the stages of Holy Week.

Start with a large plant pot base and a smaller ceramic plant pot or piece of pipe turned on its side. Build up earth around the pot into a mound with the top of the plant pot forming a cave-like entrance surrounded by sand or gravel. We created 3 small wooden crosses from branches bound together with thread and placed these on the top of the hill. We then added cress seeds (you can also use grass seed if you have longer) which grew over the course of the week and was a visible symbol of the resurrection. We also added figurines of Mary and a Roman soldier. It was such an effective model that I plan on making it again this year.

We have found two great books in particular to accompany the Easter story. Firstly Usborne's Book of Bible Stories compilation: this is a perennial fixture in our mass survival bag and has been the primary introduction for Culturebaby to some of the iconic characters from the Bible. She loves the format of these Usborne productions with their simple and engaging images and accessible text. We also received as a gift a gorgeous little Easter Bible Storybook board book featuring photographs of toy models acting out the excitement of Jesus' followers as they discover that he is alive. With the repeated phrase 'Jesus is alive', this one really stuck in Culturebaby's consciousness and she was able to take part in the telling of this story again and again.

Inevitably with children involved, imaginations take over and materials take on a life of their own. Culturebaby decided that as Jesus had vacated his tomb and no longer needed it, he wouldn't mind if she moved a homeless Makka Pakka in. It was indeed strikingly reminiscent of the little chap's Night Garden abode and, given Our Lord's general approach to the needy, I'm absolutely certain he would have had a little chuckle and endorsed the project wholeheartedly.



Disclaimer: A few months ago Usborne sent us their Bible Stories, which has been very well loved. It's a must have for mass bags everywhere... We also received the Roman soldier model from Safari Ltd. Their range of accurate figures have been brilliant for so much of our imaginative play over the last year. We highly recommend them. All other materials are our own. We will write shortly about our other Easter and spring activities - we had a lot of fun last year and failed to write much of it up at the time...