Easter is upon us and with it comes a ton of chocolate and hyperactive children.
Colour code the eggs and buckets or create a game out of Easter egg hunts by spelling out each child's name on the eggs and making them find the correct letters.
However, the day doesn’t have to be marred by tantrums and tears. If you are hosting the day's events, be prepared and set up a number of activities and games to keep the children entertained.
Get creative
There is no bigger challenge than over excited children, so gather them together and let them make a pair of bunny ears to wear throughout the day. All you need is white, brown and pink cardboard and glue. You can also help them make a cute cotton tail to complete the look and secure them with safety pins.
Now that the children have their ears and tails, make them compete in cotton tail races. Trapped in sacks, the children have to hop their way across the garden and over the finish line to win a special prize of your choice.
Encourage them to decorate their own egg baskets using milk cartons or cardboard boxes and wrapping paper. Supply a few ribbons for the handles and help them weave them through the holes in the top and they're set for the Easter egg hunt.
Easter egg hunts are a child's favourite thing about Easter. But these hunts can become disastrous if one child finds the majority of the eggs. You can avoid this by colour coding the hunt. Each child gets a specific colour and is only allowed to collect the corresponding eggs. If the children haven't made their own baskets, you can colour code them by spray painting old coffee cans.
Break out a few plastic aprons and let the children decorate their own candy coated chocolate eggs with food colouring and edible paints.
Tip: There are a number of different things you can do to spice up a routine egg hunt such as merging it with a scavenger hunt or hiding eggs inside the house.
Break out the aprons
Use a corner of the garden to set up an egg decorating station. You can use real eggs or the white, candy coated chocolate ones. Use fruit colouring and edible paints to decorate eggs for the hunt or just for fun. You can make Faberge eggs using candy coated eggs, a variety of sweets as jewels and a mix of icing sugar and water as glue.
Use marshmallows and lollipop sticks to help the children make sweet bunnies. They can cut the marshmallows into their desired shapes and because they are sticky, there is no need to make an adhesive. Use edible paint to give the bunnies' features and sweets for decoration.
Release some of the suger hype by making the children participate in a number of Easter themed races.
Tip: You can use old muffin baking trays as bowls of dye and a whisk to make dipping the eggs easier and less messy. Be sure to supply children with protective clothing or plastic aprons to avoid stains.
You can also set up a colouring in station. Use plastic cups to house sets of pencils, crayons and water paints and print a variety of Easter themed colouring pages.
On your marks, get set... Go!
Now that all the children are hyped up on sugar and excited from the decorating, it's time to use up some of that energy. Make them participate in an egg and spoon race. You might as well use the eggs the children have spent the afternoon decorating, but be sure to the mark the finish line clearly.
This is a game for the whole family. Draw your own version of the Easter bunny holding his basket of goodies and place it on the wall. Make a fluffy tail out of yarn or cotton wool, blindfold the participant and watch them try to pin the tail on the bunny. Children will love it and no doubt it will pull a few chuckles out of the parents as well. – Victoria Taylor
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