Four Fun Easter Decorations for Preschoolers

The Easter craft fest has begun in our place with Easter now less than two weeks away. JJ remembered making stained glass and paper Easter egg decorations last year (yay, we’re making craft memories together) and asked to make them again. Given that she’s not a toddler any more, this time we varied things to give this activity a preschooler twist.

To set these activities up, I had pre-cut egg shapes from coloured paper, making sure to preserve the paper inner egg and the outer egg stencil. I then covered one side of the stencils with sticky contact paper. Then over the next few days, I invited  JJ (3 years and 10 months) to create an Easter themed window art display, and here’s what she came up with!

1. Drawing on contact paper eggs to create ‘stained glass’

Doing something that we’ve done often (drawing with markers) but with a slight variation (on contact paper) is always intriguing for JJ. She focused on the stickiness and the extra pull on the marker than what she is used to. She drew quite deliberately, being careful to stay within the outline. Once she had finished, I sealed the egg by covering with another sheet of contact paper, and then cut around the shape leaving about an inch border.

2. Painting stained glass Easter eggs

Again a common technique (painting) on a different medium (contact paper), but this time JJ was fascinated with the transparency rather than the stickiness. We also had a bit of colour experimenting – JJ began painting with pink and purple, and then added yellow to create a delightful shade of (preschooler) brown, and then added some more red to ‘fix it’, until she reached a burgundy shade she was happy with. Again I covered the finished painting with contact paper to seal. We discovered that you could then use your thumbnail to draw shapes and letters in the now sealed wet paint.

3. Using glitter glue to create sparkly eggs

Anything that involves glitter glue is exciting at our place. Squeezing the glue out is a great work out for her hand and finger muscles as well. This time JJ anticipated that she would be able to squish down the glitter glue once the second sheet of contact was added, and was emphatic that no-one should squish but her!

4. Weaving paper Easter eggs

These woven placemats gave me the idea to try weaving the inner paper oval of the Easter eggs. As I hadn’t done it before, I did a couple of test goes to check that it would work on the irregular shape, and then helped JJ to have a go herself with the third (middle) one.

JJ did a fantastic job cutting both the slits (stopping just before she got to the edge) and the strips of paper with only nominal help. The weaving itself was a bit trickier. (Note to self: I think she would really like some more weaving practise, so perhaps investigate making a basic loom…)

And here is her finished Easter Egg display up on our front window. (According to JJ, it’s function is to let the Easter Bunny know to stop at our place…)

xx Danya