Easter Traditions
It’s the end of February 2024 and Floss is already asking about whether some of our Easter traditions will be happening this year. One tradition she particularly cherishes is decorating a twig or tree with decorations both handmade and collected over the years.
Floss’s favourite tradition is The Bunny Hunt. She’s been dairy free virtually since birth so chocolate hasn’t really featured heavily in our traditions. Each year any toy bunny, chick, lamb or home decorated egg is hidden around the house or garden if the weather is fair. She absolutely loves hunting them all down. If you’d like to find out more about the origins and history of Easter Egg Hunting and The Easter Bunny have a read of this blog post.
Easter Crafts with Kids
We often do lots of crafts based around eggs. The image right at the top of the page is a craft we did when Floss was very little. You use pipe cleaners to twist into an egg shape and then cover with tissue paper and glue. They’re a really lovely, simple craft.
Wood Stained Eggs
The image above is of wooden eggs (similar to these) that we dyed using wood stains from Tiny Land that are safe for kids to use. We made these five years ago now and then are still going strong and return each year. There’s something more special about homemade decorations that you create together.
Wet Felting
Another lovely craft that you can do with children and adults of various ages is wet felting eggs. I really like Rachael Greenland’s simple tutorial on how to make felted balls. All you need to do is squish the ball a little to make it egg shaped.
We often use an inside base wool and the wrap various colours of roving fibres around the initial base wool. Marie Redding is my go to supplier for all my felt. She has the most beautiful range of fibres in her Etsy shop here.
Egg Dyes
This year I’ve purchased some egg dyes to experiment with together. I’m also going to be looking back over some of the journal ideas on the Myriad site. They have excellent information and ideas on how to celebrate and learn about Easter through a range of activities. The two posts I’ll be looking at will be this one and this one.
Iris Folding
Another craft that we’ve been enjoying recently is iris folding. You can find out more about iris folding in my blog post here. I’m looking to do a chick pattern and a simple egg pattern. My favourite iris folding kit and pattern supplier is Bethan from Pretty in Paper by B and she’s got a selection of patterns and kits that are perfect for Easter and Spring here.
Easter Recipes and Simnel Cake
If you’re looking for some Easter recipe inspiration then BBC Goof Food has some kid friendly recipes here. My Mom often made Simnel cake for Easter (recipes here). It’s not a cake I ever enjoyed eating as the texture of the cake was always tricky for me and I’m not a fan of the flavour of marzipan.
However, I was fascinated by the symbolism of the eleven balls of marzipan adorned on the top of the cake in a circle. They always looked a little like eggs to me. The eleven balls are meant to represent the 11 disciples of Jesus leaving off Judas. If you’d like to find out more about the origins and history of Simnel cake then I’d recommend reading this blog post.
Learning About Easter
We always enjoy watching BBC CBeebies videos to help us understand more about festivals and celebrations. Here’s several videos about Easter. Here’s an Easter story clipped designed for children of the age 5-7.
You can find some Easter resources made by the British Council here. My daughter Floss quite enjoys the vocabulary interactive game.
This video has a bigger focus on new life in animals but touches gently on the Easter Story.
Easter Books for Children
If you search for books about Easter you’ll often find most searches bring back results about chicks and bunnies. My daughter, and children I’ve taught in the past, have often loved these types of books about baby animals and new life.
As Easter is a Christian, religious celebration I have always felt it right to ensure that children know the origin and significance of Easter. It’s very easy in our over-commercialised world for children to get lost in chocolate and egg hunts and not have any understanding of what the meaning of Easter is all about.
The Story of Easter is a book that I’d recommend to explore the topic for young children. It’s under £3 and uses rhyming text to tell the story of Easter. It’s a book we’ve shared together as a family for the last few years.
Now my daughter is older I’m looking to move onto a different book to tell the Easter story. I’ve requested Brian Wildsmith’s book The Easter Story from the library. I’ll update you with what we think once we’ve read it. Let me know if you’d recommend any.
There’s lots of lovely Springtime books that we adore. You can find a blog post with some of our favourites here. I’ve been sent a few Easter and Spring time books to review by various publishers. I’ll add more info about the ones we love soon. Do share in comments any favourites you have for Easter or Spring.
