Plastic Easter Egg Roll Painting

Toddler+

Do you have several of those plastic Easter eggs sitting around?  We do.  So we thought we'd give an activity from the awesome round-up of post-Easter plastic egg crafts from fellow mama bloggers here a try!  Inspired by this post, we put our own twist on it and made two different pretty prints this morning!  

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This method of painting is lots of fun.  You can also use rocks, marbles, or ping pong balls (really basically anything that will roll) in the place of plastic Easter eggs.  S never gets tired of getting to roll the various objects through the paint.  :)

Though I've always seen it done in a tray or box, I am not as trusting of kids' understanding of physics. ;)  To keep our floors safe, we use our disposable baking tray (we get these for $2 at grocery stores and use them constantly!  So useful!!!!).  The lid is clear (or in our case, since ours has been heavily used, it's *mostly* clear) so you can still see the action...but I can breathe a sigh of relief knowing that nothing paint covered will roll out!

Since the plastic eggs are super light weight, we needed to thin our paint out with a little water.  We love these squeezy condiment bottlesand also use them for several of our projects.  They are easy enough that a toddler can squeeze them - we highly recommend them!

For our first version of the project, S decided to do a little bit of each color.

 She placed the eggs in the paint and I helped her snap the cover on.  

She had so much fun tilting it in strange directions (even upside down) and was ooohing and aaahing over the pretty tracks the eggs were making.  

Here's the beautiful final product:

Next she wondered how the print would look if she used a ton of paint.  So she opted to finish off the containers and make some giant pools of paint.

 The first tilt

I love this shot of the momentarily-gravity-defying eggs.

So pretty!

 And of course, S loves to be part of the clean up.  Soapy water and paint covered eggs make for one happy girl.  :)

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Please always supervise your infant/child at play.  Please stay within arms reach and never leave infants/children unattended.

Exploring Sound with Homemade Egg Shakers

I apologize in advance for the insane number of pictures in this post, but our rainbow rice bin was just SO pretty, I couldn't stop myself....  :)

You can read about how we made this rainbow rice here.

I wanted to think of an activity that would be appropriate for both X and S that involved plastic Easter eggs, since it's always nice to give those things a second life after the egg hunt is over.  I wanted S to experiment with different combinations and amounts of rice and pompoms and hypothesize about whether or not they'd make sound, and how much sound she thought they'd make.  I started the activity by setting up our rice in rainbow order and dumping a ton of pompoms on the ground.  I asked S to sort  the pompoms into the rainbow (she loves to sort!).

Once they were all in place, I brought out the plastic eggs and told her my idea.  I asked her for her hypotheses.  (She always starts by saying I have a hypothesis, which is the cutest thing ever) "I have a hypothesis - that the pompom eggs will be quietest and the rice eggs will be the loudest...and that the eggs with the most rice in them will be the loudest."

Before testing her hypotheses, she wanted to play in the rice.  :)

X reallllly wanted to play too.  He had a hard time resisting the temptation of sampling the rainbow rice.  Though it is non-toxic, it is not something I'd want a baby eating, so I had to watch him very carefully.

He spent quite a while investigating the plastic eggs.

Here's S making him one of several egg shakers (this was the one she was sure was going to be the loudest!).

S desperately wanted to sit in the rice.

Then she had a great time smooshing her feet around in it.

So of course X needed to try it, too.

Just a baby hanging out in a giant bin of rainbow rice.  :)

Exploring the rice some more.

S later decided she needed to take a quick "rice nap".

Did I mention that it's SO PRETTY?!?!?  :)

X loves his rice egg shakers.  He spins them around slowly and likes to watch the rice grains move.  He also loves music, so enjoys the different sounds they make.

Here's a sampling of what big sister made for him.  She was pleased to see that she was correct in her guess that the pompoms alone wouldn't make noise.  She was, however, shocked to find that the full-to-the-brim egg shaker was nearly silent!  She loves to show everyone who has come to visit since that "it's SO QUIET!!!"  It was a fun little experiment, and X now has some fun new musical toys to explore.

I'm not sure if you can see below, but I did seal the eggs with a piece of clear tape because they easily pop back open without it!

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Please always supervise your infant/child at play.  Please stay within arms reach and never leave infants/children unattended.

Giant Easter Egg Art

Toddler+

S loves her copy of Splat the Cat: Where's the Easter Bunny?It's not *my* favorite story, but it is Easter-themed, and it does have flaps.  S has a special place in her heart for lift-the-flap books.  :)  Anyway, in the story, Splat is hoping to get a HUGE Easter Egg from the Easter Bunny.  So I thought we could do some art inspired by the story and make Splat's enormous Easter egg.

You don't need to have that book, or any Easter book to be able to do the project, but if you happen to have an Easter book (or the Splat book) it is a good excuse to tie in reading and art.

I bought a piece of foam core board from Michaels (though I bet you could easily use cardboard instead) and cut it into an egg shape with a box cutter.  I then cut strips of contact paperso that there would be sections of the egg that were sticky.  Sometimes it's easier to use contact paper than to spread glue everywhere.  Not to mention we just love using contact paper in general (if you missed our post on contact paper window art, you can read it here).  After cutting the strips, I used a glue stick to get the non-sticky side adhered to the egg.  I then removed the paper and taped each side of the contact paper strip around the backside of the egg with some scotch tape.

After getting the egg ready, we read our Splat book to get inspired!

S wanted to head straight down to the Art Room and get started.  She added a bit to the sticky contact paper before deciding that she wanted to paint the foam core board first.  She asked for red, yellow, and blue paint.  She even mixed some together to make a cool rainbow paint (I've never seen her deliberately mix paint before!).  She experimented with different painting techniques in each strip.  One strip had very thick paint, another very thin, and one she used the brush to blot the whole way across.  It's always fun for me to watch her work.

After decking out the sticky sections with a mix of sequins, pom poms, glitter, a few feathers, and exactly one hand-painted popsicle stick, her masterpiece was finished!

She said she wants to leave it out for the Easter Bunny to admire, and maybe hide somewhere for her to find on Easter.  I have a feeling he'll really like her enormous egg!

Have you seen our other Easter-themed activities?

Three Ways to Hunt Easter Eggs in the Dark

Edible Art: Easter Egg Toast

Melted White Crayon and Liquid Watercolor Easter Eggs

Toothbrush Painted Eggs

An Eggsperiment with Natural Dyes

Tie-Dyed Easter Eggs

No Sew Easter Bunny Felt Playmat

Life-Sized Easter Basket

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Please always supervise your infant/child at play.  Please stay within arms reach and never leave infants/children unattended.

Three Ways to Hunt Easter Eggs in the Dark

Toddler+

S looooves Easter Egg hunts.  So much so that she magically transforms into the Easter Bunny year round and hides "eggs" (these are usually wood blocks) in the playroom for me to hunt.  So this year, with her being a bit older, I wanted to mix things up by introducing a nighttime (or just in-the-dark - we have blackout blinds in her room so we can hunt during the day, too) egg hunt.

I had the (I thought) brilliant idea of buying glow-in-the dark paint to paint some of our old plastic eggs.  There were three different brands to choose from at Michaels.  S and I love an experiment, so we set up a trial to compare the three.  We tried glow in the dark paint from Martha Stewart, Americana, and Craftsmart and assigned a different color egg to each brand.

Though they were all non-toxic, I wasn't jazzed at the idea of them coating S's skin, so tried some no-hands painting, which she thought was hilarious.  As per the instructions on the bottle, we did two coats, allowing the paint to dry for 3 or more hours in between.

The Martha Stewart paint adhered to the eggs the easiest, but it was by far the worst at glowing.  So much so that I intend to try to return the paint to Michaels.  It was just abysmal!  Americana and Craftsmart were equally glowy.  They were each just a dollar for a full bottle, and with two coats per egg, you could easily paint 10, if not 12 plastic eggs.  The price was awesome, and I loved that the eggs would last for quite sometime.  The only downside is that the eggs lose their glow fairly quickly over about 15 minutes.  They do "recharge" very quickly (around a minute or so was enough for us), but if you are doing a hunt with a toddler who is likely to take some time to find the eggs, these might not be ideal.  On the other hand, they do make things more challenging for older children - a sort of built in timed hunt - so I guess whether or not this would be a good activity would depend on your child's age and whether they're likely to race or meander through a hunt.  :)

Next we tried glow-in-the dark bracelets stuffed inside eggs.  As you can see from the photo, these were much brighter than the glow-in-the-dark painted eggs.  You can buy sleeves of glow-in-the-dark bracelets from Michaels for $1 (that's for a dozen), so the price isn't bad - but the bracelets only glow for a few hours brightly.  We've had some that have lasted a full 24 hours, but most of them peter out before that.  So if you wanted to be able to repeat the hunt several times over different days, this could end up being a more expensive method.

The third method of hunting was for regular plastic eggs in the dark using a flashlight.  S loves flashlights as well.  She's even created a verb for using her flashlight:  flashlighting.  Sometimes she'll just wander off with it, informing me that she's "going flashlighting for a bit".  Because she enjoys them so much, she actually has her own little mini LED flashlight.  So this seemed right up her alley - and in fact, when I surveyed her on the three types of hunts, the flashlight hunt was her favorite (though she said she had fun with all of them).

I love this shot of her finding an egg on her drum.  It looks like the moon!

She found another one!

We had fun experimenting with different paints and different ways of hunting eggs in the dark.  Hopefully this will give you some ideas for new ways to try hunting for eggs!  Oh, and for the record, all the eggs were empty.  We were just hunting for the eggs themselves for the fun of it.

Have you seen our other Easter-themed activities?

Edible Art: Easter Egg Toast

Melted White Crayon and Liquid Watercolor Easter Eggs

Toothbrush Painted Eggs

An Eggsperiment with Natural Dyes

Tie-Dyed Easter Eggs

No Sew Easter Bunny Felt Playmat

Life-Sized Easter Basket

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Please always supervise your infant/child at play.  Please stay within arms reach and never leave infants/children unattended.

Edible Art: Easter Egg Toast

Older Toddler+

Edible art is always fun, so I thought up a little Easter themed edible art project for S.  We have an egg shaped cookie cutter (they are under a dollar at Michaels, but honestly if you don't already have one you could just use a knife to cut an egg shape yourself), so I decided to make some little egg shaped toasts out of some whole wheat bread (if you toast it, it makes it a little easier for little hands to spread).

After decorating (and eating!) six different eggs, S finally let me make one:

Using the cookie cutter with bread is a bit too hard for S still, so I did that step myself.

Next I used one drop of food coloring in a ramekin and added a ton of butter.  We have spreadable butter (it has oil mixed in), so that made it a lot easier for me to mix.  If you have regular butter, you might want to soften it first.  After adding the large dollop of butter to the drop of food coloring I mixed and mashed it up with a spoon until the food coloring was evenly distributed.  If you or your child would prefer, this would also work well with cream cheese.  You could also add some raspberry juice or blueberry juice as the dye - I was looking for quick and easy so I used the food coloring dye instead. Since Easter colors are typically pastels, I felt like one drop was enough to color a substantial amount of butter.

S was soooo excited.  Despite knowing that the eggs were whole wheat toast and the topping was colored butter, she kept referring to them as cookies and frosting respectively.  It was cracking me up.

Getting to spread the butter herself was a great fine motor exercise.  Younger children may prefer using a Q-Tip or just their fingers to decorate.

Proud of her first decorated egg!

Now that it's decorated - time to eat it!

It was such a fun treat to be able to decorate edible eggs.  As I mentioned, she ate six in a row!  And has come back for more on subsequent days.  I just store the colored butter with some plastic wrap over it in the fridge in between egg toast binges.  :)

We had fun mixing up food and art!

Have you seen our other Easter-themed activities?

Three Ways to Hunt Easter Eggs in the Dark

Melted White Crayon and Liquid Watercolor Easter Eggs

Toothbrush Painted Eggs

An Eggsperiment with Natural Dyes

Tie-Dyed Easter Eggs

No Sew Easter Bunny Felt Playmat

Life-Sized Easter Basket

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Please always supervise your infant/child at play.  Please stay within arms reach and never leave infants/children unattended.

Easter Eggs Three Ways: Melted White Crayon Liquid Watercolor Eggs

Older Toddler+

You can read about our first method, Tie Dyed Eggs here.
You can read about our second method, Toothbrush Painted Eggs here.

Our final adventure with egg dyeing was the most kid-friendly yet!  Unlike using the food dye, using the liquid watercolors was much less stressful.  Whatever got on our hands easily washed off, and I know from experience that the liquid watercolors wash out of clothing well, so I could breathe a little easier.  :)

I've seen white crayon resist Easter Eggs before, but I've always seen it done with cold hard-boiled eggs.  We decided to mix it up a bit and use the just out of the water hard-boiled eggs.  They were quite warm, so S opted to use a folded paper towel to hold on to them.  The white crayon glides on so easily when the eggs are hot - I really think a toddler could do this part (though you may need to help them hold the egg in place - they tend to roll away!).

S tended to just color in one spot, so I demonstrated how to make squiggly lines.  We talked about how there wouldn't be any dye where the white crayon was, so it would look cooler to create spaces between crayon lines for the dye to fill in.

After S was done coloring with the white crayons, I put the eggs in the fridge for 10-15 minutes until they were cool enough that the crayon decorations were no longer melty.  Then I gave the eggs a quick rinse with vinegar, and while still wet with vinegar (but not sitting in it), I had S squeeze the liquid watercolor of her choice over the egg.  S oohed and aahed over the reveal of the white crayon design.

Here she is making her purple egg.  We didn't need to use much of the liquid watercolors, and I was pleasantly surprised at how easily she could manipulate the bottles - the opening was small enough that just the right amount of liquid watercolor would come out (it didn't come gushing out, thankfully!) and she could easily squeeze and "aim" the bottle.

 And now for the pink egg!  We have the "tropical" liquid watercolors because I enjoy the added brightness.  They look almost neon on our eggs!  After squirting some color over the eggs, I swished/swirled the egg within the cup for about 10 seconds and then I just patted them dry.

The finished product is super cool, and it was soooo easy.  Basically no mess was created - no stained hands or clothes, and S could do all the steps herself.  Because of the kid-friendliness of this method, I think this was our favorite way to dye eggs (though the Tie Dye eggs are undeniably beautiful as well!)

Have you seen our other Easter-themed activities?

Three Ways to Hunt Easter Eggs in the Dark

Edible Art: Easter Egg Toast

Toothbrush Painted Eggs

An Eggsperiment with Natural Dyes

Tie-Dyed Easter Eggs

No Sew Easter Bunny Felt Playmat

Life-Sized Easter Basket

Follow along with us on Facebook, Google+, Pinterest or Subscribe by Email!

Please always supervise your infant/child at play.  Please stay within arms reach and never leave infants/children unattended.