Easter Celebration at Daycare

First ever outdoor egg hunt (at this house). The kids had a great time!

We did a lot of Easter activities throughout last week at daycare. While most of the celebrating was done on Friday, we started our week dying eggs naturally, which the kids had a lot of questions about. The rest of the week we also did a parent pleasing craft, spring time sensory goop and baking soda snow, and a simple Seder plate to learn a bit about Passover. Friday was our day to eat bunny cake, do an egg hunt in the backyard, play games, and do one last craft. In the past, I've tried to fit a lot in in one day (see a past Easter Party here), but I've learned the kids have a better time if we go slow and spread out our fun.

The kids really got involved in the natural egg dying process. This is my favorite way to dye eggs now. Read more about it here.


Our Easter/spring time craft: carrots with hand prints for the stem. We call these Parent Pleasers (those crafts that are cute and memorabilia), but the kids enjoyed doing these too. They were excellent when I traced their hands and they loved gluing the orange pieces of paper to the carrot. 

These kiddos love sensory activities! The mud kitchen is a favorite outdoors, but since it was a rainy day, we brought our mess indoors. I made goop (cornstarch, water, and bright green food coloring) and baking soda "snow" (baking soda, cold water, purple food coloring). The kids played with it for the last hour and a half of the day. Even the littlest daycare kiddo got to play too! What I love about both of these sensory activities is that they vacuum out of carpet really well!



Thursday was our day to do TWO Seder meals, one with the littles right before lunch and the second with the bigs after school. I had our Seder plate set and each child had their own plate with items to try it. One of my daycare families made unleavened bread and brought it to share. Without a doubt, the hit of the day was the Matzo. Hearing the kids ask, "can I have more matzah please?" was the cutest thing ever. While they sampled the various things on the Seder plate and drank sparkling grape juice, I told a kid friendly version of Passover (I found this site to be extremely helpful in telling the story).

Friday morning we kicked off our Easter bunny themed celebrations with the annual bunny cake.

Our next activity was a egg toss game. The kids had to stand behind the pink bucket (filled with eggs) and toss them into the Easter baskets. If they made one in, there was excessive cheering. If they didn't, there was still plenty of cheering, excitement, and encouragement. All kids got to pick a prize from the prize bucket. There was plenty to choose from too: beads, whistles, stampers, rubber ducks, silly string. I decided not to do gift baggies this year and go for the prize bucket instead. The kids seemed to love picking out their own goodies.
Now, the biggest thing with this egg toss game is that we used the colored hard boiled eggs we made earlier in the week! The kids thought I was legit crazy for letting them use the "real eggs." Sure most were cracked, but it made for a memorable game!

Another memorable activity: an egg hunt! The eggs weren't filled at all (I let the kids pick out another prize after the egg hunt), but that didn't bother the kids one bit. As soon as I said "go!" they were off and found all 170 eggs hidden around the backyard. I put a giant Easter basket out on a chair in the yard that they put the eggs in when their hands got too full. We'll definitely be doing this again!

Our movies for the afternoon: Charlie Brown Easter and The Easter Bunny is Comin' to Town. The second is kinda creepy, but the kids enjoy it every year.

To end the day, the kids decorated "Easter eggs" with crayons, markers, colored pencils, glitter glue, and anything else they dug out of the art supplies. The kids absolutely love "arting" (as they call it). Now that I have a group of (mostly) preschoolers, it's fun to get out out glue, scissors, and the like and not have to worry about anyone hurting themselves.

I really enjoyed the 'celebrating all week' rather than just one day. I'll have to remember that for next year.