Entertaining kids at home at Easter

With a few weeks off nursery on the horizon, I'm getting my thinking cap on as to how I can keep my 4 and 2 year-olds entertained.

Whilst we're hoping for some crisp Spring days in the park, I'm also prepared for rain and some time at home. To stop the girls from going mad and bickering with each other, I've come up with a few crafty ideas to keep them amused:

Mrs Mactivity

Mrs Mactivity is a website I've only just discovered and it's fab. It's packed full of mostly free designs you can print off and make/colour at home. There are regular themed designs - in the past week we have been having great fun making the Easter cards (see above). It's a website set up by a collective of ex and current teachers and designers with the aim to make learning fun. Many designs are currently free, there's also a subscription option offering unlimited downloads and some extra content.

Collage

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Get a stack of old magazines and cut up faces, bodies, objects -anything really.

I tend to cut things out in advance and put them on the table with a piece of white card and glue. Both girls will happily sit for maybe 20 minutes sticking the cuttings all over the page. I find it quite fascinating to see what they come up with!

Shortly after we did the first collage together, our eldest was asked to bring a picture in to nursery school for Show and Tell to illustrate 'Autumn Arriving'. I cut out anything remotely Autumnal from the weekend's newspapers and recent magazines and she had some artwork ready to take to school.

Gingerbread decorating

Some supermarkets - Sainsbury's and Morrisons are two - sell Gingerbread decorating sets.

For under £2 you get at least 5 gingerbread men, coloured icing and sprinkles. 

I lay out the gingerbread and accessories and leave my eldest to decorate. She usually spends a good 10 minutes decorating before getting round to eating it.

I tried making gingerbread myself but it was a disaster! This keeps things simple and the children love it!

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Window Colouring

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A good, no mess activity that works well for getting great pictures of your children.

We use Crayola washables which wipe off easily and let the girls colour on our glass kitchen doors.

You can then get some photographs of them in action by photographing them from outside.

Head to my blog post here to see more examples.

 

Flower Pressing

I have fond memories of having a flower press as a child - carefully collecting flowers from the garden and placing them in the press - using the results on birthday cards or homemade art.

It's quite an old school idea but there's something quite nice about introducing the little ones to nature and making a game out of collecting flowers and leaves from the garden or on the walk home from school/nursery.

We bought this one from Amazon and it's a good size with plenty of space for holding your flowers.

 

I'd love to hear your ideas for what to do with the kids on a day at home, let me know in the comments below.