Easter art projects…eggscellent? Yes, I know it’s  corny but, I couldn’t resist.

There are many Easter activities for children.Most of them I have seen are copycat crafts.

The problem is that instead of thinking of what kids are capable of, people tend to think of symbols of holidays and how they can recreate that.

For example: A bunny rabbit is not something most young children can do that on their own. Therefor it is not age appropriate.

What I often do for crafts when I am trying to commemorate a holiday or other event and I can’t think of a craft to do  I do this: I will take the symbol of the holiday and maybe not make the type of crafts that you see all over the web, but use that symbol and have art activities based around them.

Easter arts and crafts is a perfect example: There are many activities that are done around eggs in Easter as you know. Many of them are making cute little people or “things” that are made out of eggs. What I do in a case like this is use the eggs and come up with a number of activities with eggs without them having to copy a particular, copycat idea.

There are two ways I work with eggs. These are really simple  and most kids can do them. The first one uses hard boiled eggs. Cook up the eggs and when they are cool  allow the children to decorate them with markers, tissue paper dipped in water and then put on the eggs.

The eggs below were colored on with sidewalk chalk and the other one was sprayed with watercolor paint in a spray bottle.

When the eggs are dried, the children peel the eggs and then use them to create mosaics. The peeled eggshells create very pretty mosaic pieces and there is an image of peeled eggshells at the top of this post.

The second way to  deal with eggs is to give the children raw eggs that have the egg inside removed to decorate.

The best way to do this is to pierce the eggs at either end with a large tapestry type needle. Then putting the egg over a bowl, gently blow out the egg from one end to the other.

These eggs are veerrrry delicate and cannot be handled by very young children. The older children that know how to handle them without crushing them can do a variety of egg decorating projects.

Coloring them with markers is probably not a great idea as they can be easily crushed when coloring. Delicate watercolor painting can definitely be attempted and there is another type of watercolor type painting to do as well.

Take some paper towel and dampen them with water and some vinegar. Make sure they are not too wet. Put a plastic under the paper towel. Take some food coloring and drop onto the paper towel. Wrap the egg with the paper towel and the plastic goes around it. After a few minutes remove and there will be some very delicate watercolor effects on the eggs.

Another way to decorate the eggs is by speckle painting them. Take a toothbrush, dip into some paint and let the children run their fingers over the toothbrush full of paint. Speckles of paint will go all over the eggs creating a speckled egg. This can get a bit messy so make sure the children are well covered up.

The truth is that once you have all of your eggs you will probably want to make baskets for them.

This means to take a ready made basket and then to just allow the children to decorate them anyway they want. I would give them many materials for them to choose from ribbons, cellophane paper, sequins, all kinds of different papers that they can cut up, tissue paper, yarn, aluminum foil and anything else you can think of.

The 4th Easter crafts project you can do is to make egg puppets.

Draw egg shapes on a large piece of tagboard and let the children choose which one they want to use and then cut it out.

Then offer the children a whole array of materials that they can decorate their eggs with to make some kind of figure.

Googly eyes will ensure that they make some kind of face. You are not limited to the items I have shown but, can of course use anything you have around the house.

When done, let dry and tape a dowel or a large craft stick to the back. The children can use them as egg puppets or they can make a bunch and stick them in a piece of Styrofoam to be egg people.If you don’t have any access to real eggs and want to use eggs then you may want to try these Ready to Paint Paper Mache Eggs .

What has been your experience in dealing with delicate eggs?