Easter Egg Hunt Quiz

During our current lockdown situation I wanted to come up with a fun little activity for my husband, because even 30 year old men need new things to break up the day and get them off the Playstation.

With Easter coming up I had an egg hunt in mind but wondered how I could make it more fun for an adult.

We've been doing a lot of quizzing so far with our friends over video chat, so I was inspired to combine a quiz with an egg hunt.  

First,  I cut out 12 egg shapes from coloured card and decorated one side of them.

Then I search for trivia questions with numerical answers, where each answer was between 1 and 12, and wrote them on the back of the eggs.

These are the questions I used:

1. How many terms did Jimmy Carter serve as US President?

2. How many landlocked countries are there in South America?

3. In English law what is the smallest number of people that can constitute a riot?

4. How many sculpted lions sit at the base of Trafalgar Square?

5. How many hundreds of miles would The Proclaimers walk?

6. On most phones, what number key also features the letters M, N, and O?

7. What was the MS Windows computer operating system version that succeeded Vista?

8. How many planets are in our solar system? 

9. How many rooms are on the Cluedo game board?

10. How many years did Tony Blair serve as Prime Minister of the UK?

11. What was the number of the first Apollo moon landing?

12. Total of the sides on a pentagon and a heptagon?

To set up the egg hunt I hung 12 pegs on our washing line and wrote the numbers 1 -12 on them using a white board pen.

Then I hid the eggs around our garden. We don't have a huge garden but it was big enough to hide the 12 eggs.

Then the hunt was on for Andrew! I sat back and enjoyed watching him go past one spot in particular where I'd hidden an egg very much in plain sight but he didn't spot it for a while.

When he found each egg he had to attach it to the peg with the correct number answer. A lot of the questions were quite tricky so there was a lot of switching round as he found more eggs.

This activity got his brain working, his body moving, and putting it together gave me something to do, so a success for all.

This game could easily be adapted for children with different questions, or for even younger children you could use coloured eggs to be put in corresponding coloured containers.
To make this game educational, for anyone currently home schooling, each egg could have a maths question with a numerical answer. If you were feeling really fancy you could laminate the eggs to use again and again with different sums or questions.

Scrapbooking #6

The scrapbook continues, this time with a photo from my sister's Easter party earlier this year. The one where I went dressed as an Easter basket.

The thing I love most about this layout is the lettering. I think up until now for the words on a page I just used Letracet or printed it out. so I wanted to try something more creative.

For the word party I printed out the word in reverse on to the back of a piece of yellow wall paper which I stuck to a piece of printer paper so that it would go through the printer correctly. Then I just cut along the lines. I did the same thing with 'Jocelyn's Easter' on white paper which I then mounted on to blue paper.

The background is a sheet from this Martha Stewart pack, and the embellishments come from a calender set I got as a present a few years ago. Each sheet for three days and comes with die-cut pictures for scrap booking and card making. It's great because I knew exactly where to go for Easter themed pictures - April!

Easter Basket Costume

My sister had an Easter themed party last Friday and I decided to go as an Easter basket!

I made the basket skirt by cutting strips of fabric and ironing over the edges. I sewed the vertical strips to the top horizontal strip and then got to weaving. I sewed another horizontal strip to the bottom and then had a long conversation with my sister about closures. In the end we decided against a zip or velcro and realised I could just attach the two sides and put elastic in the top strip to make it fit.

Once on, some of the horizontal strips started to drop and bunch up so I tried to sew across the weaving but this would have been easier before I sewed the sides together. Oh well, I'll know for the next time I need to make a basket skirt.

I attached some straps - basket handles - which cross over at the back, and fastened a fabric bow to the front. Then I stuffed some paper eggs in the front to complete the look.

What do you think? Much better than putting on some ears and a cotton wool ball and calling yourself a bunny, right?

Crochet Easter Basket

This craft is all my Mum's creation. I asked her if she wanted to do a guest post but she declined.

My Mum thought it would be nice to have an Easter themed item to sell at the craft fair last week so, being the crochet whiz that she is, she made these little Easter baskets.

They're the perfect size the hold two mini chocolate eggs and a chocolate bunny. So sweet!

Easter Crafts

This Easter holidays I've been/will be delivering some kids art classes for the Letchworth Arts Centre.

They came up with the titles for each session and it was up to me to finalize the activity and make the examples. I'm a big believer in having examples as it's so much easier to show the children what you want them to make then try and describe it to them. 

In tomorrow's session we'll be making pom-pom chicks! I'll be encouraging the use of non-traditional colours for the chicks, mainly because I don't think we'll have enough yellow wool to go around.

I've cut out the cardboard rings already in two sizes, and then there'll be googly eyes and funky foam for the beaks and feet.

Last Friday was a session for toddlers (the other ones are for ages 5 -10) in which we made Easter masks. I pre-cut the holes in the paper plate and then encouraged the children to rip up tissue paper and glue it on.

One little boy wanted to make a dinosaur mask with sharp teeth.

I was all, 'The Easter dinosaur. That's a thing.'

Another session last week was making dream catchers. Which meant I had to first teach myself how to make a dream catcher, which I did with the help of a few tutorials on blogs. I let the younger ones just wrap the string any old way across the ring but I taught the older ones how to do the proper pattern. They did pretty good.

For each session I come prepared with Easter colouring sheets for the children that finish early. For the toddler class I drew patterned eggs on A3 paper for them to paint. They loved it even though some of my eggs looked more like stripy potatoes!

Egg World: The Next Generation

Do you remember the 'Egg world's I made last year ?

Well my Mum's class (of 4/5 year olds) made some this year and here are my favourites.

Egg in a bed. Love the Tinkerbell duvet.

Egg in a tank. Great use of a bottle top for the helmet.

And penguin egg! Adorable.

Creative Steps

In the current issue of Creative Steps magazine you can find projects my moi!

These cute chick and lamb boxes.

These recycled paper nests to fill with Easter treats.

And these Mother's Day cards.

I was very odd making these Spring themed crafts at Christmas time, but it's exciting to be in print again.

Egg world

When I was in year 5 my class had an Easter competition to create a scene using eggs. I made a jungle with an adventurer egg and a parrot egg. It was awesome. My mum is now reusing this idea with her school and asked me to make the examples...or should that be eggsamples. Hahaha.

First you need to blow some eggs. You could just use hard boiled eggs, but something about crafting with the egg still inside seems icky to me. Take a large needle and make a hole in each end of the egg. This is definitely an adults job, which is why I let my mum do it and I took the photos.

Then put a straw over one of the holes and blow. I think kids will enjoy seeing this bit. I'm 19 and I did! It's both gross and cool.

And fun fact; I used the two eggs to make cupcakes. Yum yum.

Then you need to run water through the eggs shells and leave them to dry.

I had decided to make a beach scene, using a shoe box as a base. So I started by gluing in paper for the sky and the sand. Alternatively you could paint the inside of the box the required colour.

Then I added cotton wool for the clouds, some gold glitter on the sand and a piece of corrugated card which was going to become a wave. Thick card like this doesn't stick in place well just using PVA glue so I used a couple of split pins to attach it to the shoe box

I covered the card with blue sugar paper and tissue paper to look like the sea.

Next I painted my eggs using acrylic paint so that it would stick to the shell. I imagine poster paint would work as well, if not, trying mixing a bit of PVA glue to paint.

So here it is. Surfer dude egg and sun bathing egg. The surfer's hair is just a little bit of brown paper, curled using scissors, his surf board is funky foam with a painted stripe down the middle and the sun bather's hat is patterned card comprising of a large circle with a hole in it and a cone shape.

I also made a simpler example of a bumble bee egg in a flower using a jar lid and a plastic dessert pot which might be easier for younger children.

You want to make sure that the lid isn't too big to fit inside the pot

Cover the lid in glue and stick on scrunched up bits of yellow crepe paper.

Cut out petal shapes and stick them to the inside of the pot.

Place the lid into the pot and fold down the petals once the glue has dried.

Paint the egg to look like a bumble bee. I used funky foam for the wings, but you could also use wire or a pipe cleaner covered in tissue paper or cling film.

Put the bee in the flower and there you have it. A fun Easter activity for kids.