Easter Printables

Have your plastic Easter eggs made an appearance in your home yet this year?  I love bringing them out about now; love how they brighten things up a bit with their pretty colors. :)  I crave color this time of year.  Crave it.

I’m in the process of going through all of my printables and moving them to a site where they can be a bit more organized and just… prettier than the current printables page.  I found some Easter-themed printables and thought it would be fun to post a little reminder about them.

One of M’s still-favorite games to play with our plastic eggs is our Easter Chicks in Eggs game.  I made this for him a couple of years ago and it is still a lot of fun – for him and the grown-ups around here. 

 

Another favorite when he was 2 or 3 years old was this Easter Basket file folder game (I have to say I’m really looking forward to re-using some of these handmade activities with our new little one!). This is a fun way to work on one-to-one correspondence and practice counting to 10.

I also want to share this little Bunny Shapes Craft with you.  I made this for M a couple of years ago, but for some reason never shared it on here.  He went through a phase where he loved putting little animals together with shapes.  This is a fairly closed-ended activity, but it’s good for shape recognition and learning to follow directions!

Have a beautiful day!
Nicole :)

Holy Week 3-part or sequencing Cards

I created these cards for use during Lent, especially Holy Week (the week between Palm Sunday and Easter).  I wanted to share them early in Lent so you can use them however you want.  They would go nicely with the Jesus Loves Me, This I Know e-book that was released earlier this week!  This was actually something that Erin and I wanted to include in the e-book, but just couldn’t get it completed in time.  The pictures used on these cards are vintage illustrations, and beautiful, I think. :)

There are a total of 8 cards illustrating everything from Jesus’ triumphant entry into Jerusalem to his resurrection and appearance to the two disciples on the road to Emmaus. 

Each card has a label, like traditional 3-part cards, as well as a scripture reference.  To use these as 3-part cards, you will need to print 2 copies.  Leave the label attached to the illustrations in one set, and separate the labels from the illustrations in the other set.  Have your child match up the pictures and the labels.  These would also make wonderful sequencing cards for telling the Easter story!

Download here, or click on the image above!  Enjoy!

This post is linked to the Celebrating Lent Link-Up Party at Explore and Express and Wonderful in an Easter Kind of Way.

Have a beautiful day! :)
Nicole

Ideas for Making Lent Meaningful

Lent has officially begun!  I thought I’d share some links for you to check out… these are what we did for Lent last year, and what we plan to do again this year.   You can see our crafts/artwork:
our Lenten Basket:
and our Lenten Countdown Cross:  

I hope these inspire you to create some Lenten traditions in your own homes!

I mentioned in those posts, rather presumptuously, that I was planning on making a second set of the Countdown Cross to give away; and that I planned to offer everything as a printable this Lent.  It seemed like I had so much time to get all this done!  Silly girl.  With two computer crashes to deal with in the past year all of my saved items for the printables were lost, and while I did plan to re-do everything in time for this year’s Lent… well, I ended up pregnant and in some sort of pregnancy-fog, and that’s my excuse these days for every single failing I might be accused of.  An excuse I’m sticking to until I can claim the new baby as one. After that gets old I’m sure I’ll come up with something else.  ;)

Of course there is still the new Lent / Easter e-book!  Go check it out if you haven’t yet!

This post is linked to the Celebrating Lent Link-Up Party at Explore and Express and Wonderful in an Easter Kind of Way, as well as:

Have a beautiful Day! :)
Nicole

Jesus Loves Me Lenten activities E-Book!!

Well, it’s up and ready to go!  There was a bit of a delay; thank you all so much for your patience!

This e-book is the brainchild of Erin over at Royal Baloo.  Erin organized it, edited it, put the actual book together… and put a lot of hard work into each part.  I simply helped with some ideas, a handful of printables, and photographing and writing up a few of the crafts.  It was a pleasure to work with Erin and I’m so glad she offered me the chance to do this with her!!  You can read more about the e-book in her post.  It’s our hope that this will be a help to you as you teach your child about how much Jesus loves them, as shown through the story of Easter.

You have the option of downloading the e-book from Scribd or 4Shared.  Click on either link to go to the download page.  This e-book is totally free!

This post is linked to the Celebrating Lent Link-Up Party at Explore and Express and Wonderful in an Easter Kind of Way.

If you’re going to do the activities and blog about it, please add your blog to the linky list below!

Have a beautiful day! :)
Nicole

 

Craft Time – Ascension of the Lord

Today is the 40th day of Easter (which is a 50 day season), and marks the end of the 40 days that Jesus spent on Earth after His resurrection.  This is the day He ascended into heaven! 
This morning M and I read the Bible story about the ascension and then did a quick craft to make it more memorable.  The craft was inspired by this post at Catholic Icing – I just changed it up a little bit.

Supplies:

 Look at the supplies, not the messy art table!

Paper or styrofoam cup, yarn, needle, hole punch, markers, cotton balls, glue, cardstock sun shape, and a small picture of Jesus.  You could use a magazine cutting of Jesus glued to cardstock or find a picture online.  We shrunk a coloring book picture on our scanner and printed it out on cardstock.  You want your Jesus picture to be small enough to “hide” inside the cup.
Steps:
1. Color your cup blue, and color your sun and picture of Jesus.
2. Glue cotton balls around the top and bottom of your cup. 
3. Punch a hole at the top and bottom of your sun, and a hole above Jesus’ head (we glued on an extra strip of cardstock to the back of Jesus so there was room for a hole above his head).
4. Thread your yarn through the holes in the sun, down through the bottom of the cup (we used an embroidery needle to thread the yarn through the cup), and through the hole above Jesus’ head.   
5. Tie a loop above the sun, large enough to hand on a door knob, if you wish.
6. Tie a knot where the yarn goes through the cup, so it rests on the outside of the cup.
7. Tie a knot through the hole above Jesus.
There you go!  You can pull the sun to make Jesus “rise” into the sky and be hidden behind the clouds:
 
Cute, simple, and fun to play with! :)

Have a beautiful day! :)

Easter Basket Counting Game

This is a pretty simple game…. place the baskets in numerical order from 0 – 10 (obviously you can do 0-9 or 1-10 if you prefer), then place the correct number of eggs in each basket.  Here’s what the playing pieces look like:OR place the egg with the correct number of flowers painted on it in each basket.  OR turn it all into a file folder game and do both.

I decided to create a file folder game.
   
I laid the baskets out on the inside of my folder and taped them down with small pieces of double stick tape along the top and bottom edges.

Then I laminated the entire folder with contact paper.  (Note:  I tried adding a pocket for the game pieces, but it just wasn’t working for so many pieces.  I ended up putting them in a zipper baggie which I stapled to the back of the folder.)

Next, I took a very sharp pair of scissors (you could use an exacto knife) and made a slit in each basket.  I had to be careful to go only through the top layer of contact paper and the basket, and not through the file folder itself.  This turned the baskets into little pockets for the eggs.
M counts out the correct number of eggs and then places them in the appropriate basket/pocket: Then, if he wants, he places the flowered eggs in the correct baskets:
Despite the lengthy instructions for putting this together, it actually only took about 1/2 hour.  Let me know if you use it… we are really loving it!

The printables can be downloaded here.

Have a beautiful day! :)

Easter Egg Games

Last Easter (pre-blog) M was 2 1/2 and crazy about opening and closing plastic Easter eggs.  He could not stop playing with them.  He was also obsessed with trucks at the time and the idea of flat tires.  Every day he hoped out loud that we would get a flat tire.  Nothing would have made him happier. :)

Well, these loves/obsessions/fantasies of his all came together in my mind one day and I put together a little game for him, which we have been playing all year long.  Seriously.  Our plastic eggs were never put away, and my husband and I now groan whenever M mentions the “flat tire game”.  It is actually pretty fun…  at first.  52 weeks later, it can get a little old. ;)

It has been such a hit that I’ve thought about posting about it before now, but decided to wait until it’s kind of normal to have plastic eggs out and about.  And I’ve changed it up a bit too, with new clip art, which makes it into a brand new game in the mind of a now 3 1/2 old.  (I wish I could share the trucks and flat tires clip art, but I have no idea where I found it!)

This is what the game pieces look like:

And here’s a color cube (with playing instructions) to go with them: (If  your plastic eggs are not these particular colors, there’s a black and white version that you can color in.)

Put the game pieces in the eggs; there are 20 chicks and 5 other animals.  The other 5 animals (cow, elephant, giraffe, zebra, and lion) each get their own egg.  You can give each chick its own egg too, or put several in one egg and just a couple in another, etc.   It depends on how long you want the game to last and how many eggs you have on hand.  Place the filled eggs in a basket and mix them around.

To play, each person takes a turn rolling the color cube then selecting an egg of that color.  Open the egg and see what you have.  If it’s a chick, yay!  You get another turn.  Put the chick in front of you and discard the opened egg.  If it’s an animal whose life doesn’t really begin in an egg, your turn is over and it’s the next person’s turn.

Count the chicks at the end and see who has the most!

We’ve played some variations of this, which are just as much fun.  Those variations are explained in the .pdf file.

It's a good game for counting, learning to take turns, and learning that some animals hatch from eggs and others  are born from mamas.

Click here for the printables.

Have a beautiful and fun day! :)