My daughter wanted to make an Easter craft, so we came up with these very cute Bunny Wands. This craft required my assistance, especially for the hot glue steps, but my 5.5 year old daughter was able to manage the rest. She especially loved choosing ribbons, bells and gems to personalize her bunny.
Materials
cardboard
egg carton
yarn (i used furry yarn and thick white yarn)
dowel
beads (1 pink for nose, 2 black for eyes)
tulle ribbon
ribbons
bells
optional: flower or gems for decoration
Steps
Cut out 2 bunny heads from cardboard. Hot glue a wood dowel to 1 bunny head. Scrunch and glue the tulle ribbon to the dowel at the bottom of the bunny’s head. Glue the other cardboard bunny head on top of the dowel, so the tulle is sandwiched in between.
Cut 2 pieces of yarn. Glue an end of each piece at the tip of each bunny ear, in between the pieces of cardboard. Wrap the yarn around the bunny head until the cardboard is covered.
Cut one egg compartment from the egg carton and trim until it is approx. 1.5″ tall. Make a hole through the end of the egg carton piece. Cut another piece of yarn and thread through a large needle. Make a knot at one end or glue the yarn to the inside of the egg carton piece. Sew through the hold and around the egg carton until the carton is covered with yarn. Thread a pink bead and pull until it rests over the egg carton hole. Sew around the carton 1 or 2 more times and tie off.
Hot glue the ‘nose’ (egg carton covered in yarn) onto the bunny face. Hot glue 2 black beads above the nose for eyes.
Tie 3-4 pieces of ribbon around the base of the bunny’s face. Thread bells onto one of the ribbons.
I like to save up small gifts for our egg hunt. My kids LOVE the egg hunt. It’s their favourite Easter tradition. I will hide a few chocolate eggs, but my kids go pretty wild after eating chocolate so I try to limit the amount.
Here are some non-chocolate items I put in the small and medium size eggs.
A note on buying these items – I tend to shop all year round for holidays. It helps me spread out spending, take advantage of sales and combine purchases at small shops to save on shipping. So, some of these items I bought months or even years ago. And some are small pieces that came with sets I’ve given to my kids in the past. I kept the small pieces out because I was worried they would put them in their mouth or lose them. Now, I think they’re ready to play with them. 2 gifts in 1.
I also save and reuse our plastic eggs every year. Every little bit helps.
I love hearing about other families’ traditions. Do you do an egg hunt? What do you put in the eggs?
Want to see what’s in my kids’ Easter baskets this year? My kids are 3 and 5 and this year I put things in their baskets that will compliment our spring play.
I love making holiday baskets. I like to shop small when possible, so I tend to shop very early – some of these items I bought last year (lol). I find that if I shop early and shop for future holidays, I’m able to combine orders and save on shipping. It also spreads out the spending and makes things a little more budget-friendly for me.
Both my kids LOVE the egg hunt, so I save most small-ish items to put in the eggs. I found that the smaller items got lost in the basket and my kids found them more exciting when they discovered the little gifts in eggs.
I love Peter Rabbit and Beatrix Potter’s world of adorable critters. I used to read the stories over and over again when I was a child. So, when I saw Tiny Fox Hole’s set of Peter Rabbit characters I had to get them. I wanted to give them a a world to live in where my kids could recreate parts of the books and their own imaginative stories. This play tray is what I came up with.
Supplies I used
Tuff Tray (mine is from Scholar’s Choice)
Cardboard tray insert (I made this using the box the tray came in)
Wooden characters (Tiny Fox Hole)
Grass Section
Artificial grass squares (Dollarama)
DIY Tree Burrow (see here for more info on how I made it)
Wood furniture – The Friendly Woodworker from Wonder + Kind
Miniature vegetables (Maileg)
Felt pond (Sewing Seeds Play*)
Glass beads
Grapat Mandala Coins
River rocks and artificial greenery
Grimm’s wood stacking bowls
Grapat Mandala Eggs
Resin eggs (The Creative Mix Shop)
Grapat Mandala Flowers
Woods Section
Sensory Mix (homemade)
Raduga Grez and Ostheimer wood trees
Wood mushrooms (Dollarama)
Stone and gem mushrooms (AliExpress)
Grapat Mandala Beehives
Grapat Mandala Mushrooms
Grapat Mandala Trees
Felt bee (Sewing Seeds Play*)
Mr. McGregor’s Garden
Dry black beans (Bulk Barn)
Goki My Little Garden Doll Accessories (Sewing Seeds Play*)
Felt worms, ladybug, bees, butterfly and dragonfly (Sewing Seeds Play*)
Finally, I set up our Yoto Mini with the Peter Rabbit card so the kids and I could listen to the stories we played. This tray is one of our favourites. What do you think?
Last year, I found a large cardboard tube in our recycling materials that I thought would make a great treehouse for the kids to play with. I cut a door in it and placed it in a small world scene. My daughter became so enamoured with the idea of it that she and my husband built some cardboard stairs inside leading to an upstairs bedroom with a shelf. I saved the cardboard tube and this year I wanted to give it some extra love to make it look more like a treehouse.
I hot glued two toilet paper rolls onto the sides of the tube for “branches” and then paper mâchéd the tree with scrap paper packaging. I used a 2:1 water and Elmer’s glue mixture to adhere the paper strips around the tube. I left lots of bunches in the paper mâché to give the effect of tree bark.
Then I painted the tree – starting with black in the crevices and working to a lighter colour brown on the tops of the ridges. A little green sponge painting around the base and where the branches meet the tree trunk gave the feel of some moss. Next year I may put a little actual moss on it. I am no artist, but it looked enough like a tree for my kids.
Once the tree was dry, we put it into our Peter Rabbit Sensory Play Tray. My daughter wanted to move some furniture in, so we put a lamp, small fireplace and couch downstairs and added a tv, pillow and blanket upstairs. Now it’s all ready for our wooden bunny friends.
My daughter and I thought our dollhouse walls were looking a little bare, so we decided to create some art and flower arrangements to freshen them up for spring.
Here’s how we made them.
Paintings
Materials
Mini Canvases (Walmart)
Washable acrylic paint
Maileg cardboard cutout and tag pictures
Fairy picture canvas (Dollarama)
Command Picture Hanging Strips
We tried a few different methods to make the paintings.
I sketched a few bunny portraits using a Maileg bunny tag for guidance and we free-hand painted a few of the canvases.
I am not much of an artist, unlike my daughter, so I cut out a small image from a leftover Maileg sticker. I taped the sticker to a canvas and dabbed a sponge brush around it to create a mouse silhouette and then repeated 2 more times. The sticker was too small for my daughter to manage this technique, so I went hunting for a larger image to use.
When I saw the cardboard mouse figure in my box of Maileg things, I thought it would be perfect for this project. I traced the cardboard mouse figure (it was packaging that came with a mouse outfit) onto some cardstock, taped the cardstock on the canvas and then my daughter painted around it. Once the background was finished, she removed the cardstock stencil and painted the mouse. This was the most successful and least frustrating method, for both myself and my daughter.
We also had a canvas (from Dollarama) with a fairy scene pre-drawn on it that we decided to add to the collection
Once the paintings were all finished and dry, we put Command Picture Hanging Strips on the back and adhered them to the dollhouse walls.
Picture Hanging Strips work like velcro – one side sticks to the canvas and the other side sticks to the wall. This way the picture can be moved around easily. I thought that it would be a fun feature for my daughter if she could rearrange the paintings. It also means we can easily create new paintings and switch them out in the future.
When I saw the little wood flower pots, I immediately thought of our dollhouse. They were very simple to decorate and put together. My daughter painted the pots with acrylic paint. Once dry, she put a little brown air dry clay in each pot and then stuck the mini flowers in each pot. We left the pots overnight to cure before putting them in the dollhouse the next morning.
My daughter and I had a lot of fun doing this project together. I think it’s very likely we will do it again.
If you saw my last post, then you know my 3 year old son loves his farm toys. He begged me to set up a farm activity for him. So, I used some sensory materials from my cupboard and from previous activities to make him a tray.
I used dry popcorn, green split peas for grass, and chocolate cereal for mud. I had a leftover mix from a previous activity of dry spaghetti, lentils and ground up cereal that covered the horse paddock.
Other materials
Felt pond (Sewing Seeds Play)
Wood fences (Ostheimer)
Animals (Schleich)
Chicken coop (Schleich)
Barn (Fisher-price)
My son was thrilled. I love a tray like this with dry goods because I will leave them out for a few days. Although the odd stray piece will make it out of the tray, it’s fairly easy to pick up. It’s an easy way to add a little special magic to his farm play.
My son has definite preferences when it comes to toys. He tends to play with the same favourites over and over. If I do a toy rotation and introduce something new, he will of course be interested in it, but he always goes back to the tried-and-true. Here are his 6 favourites.
6. Play Food
Both my kids love play food. They love to get my husband and I a “coffee” in the morning with some treats on the side. The food is used in picnics, birthday parties, pretend shop play and so much more. I don’t think brand matters much to them; they play happily with all of it. I do try to vary the material of the food – felt, wood, plastic, resin, etc. – to give a little extra sensory experience.
5. Trains
Our trains and wooden tracks are out all the time. My son has a favourite steam engine that he will drive endlessly around the tracks. He also likes to see how many trains he can connect in one strand and how far he can pull it without breaking. We have a few varieties of tracks that all work great – Brio, Hape, Ikea, Bigjigs – but when it comes to the trains, Brio is the clear favourite.
4. Large Trucks
My son loves vehicles, especially large trucks. He will lay down flat on the floor and move the truck so he can watch the wheels turn. He finds it fascinating and will spend long periods repeating this over and over. When he is working on the rotational schema, this is one of his favourite activities. Again, we have a variety of brands, but the Fagus trucks are probably out the most. They are beautifully made, sturdy (he will sometimes ride them), and easy to manouver. To me, they are well worth the investment.
3. Play Couch and Foam
I can’t have a favourites list without including the play couch. We have a Nugget that has been a house, a slide, a monster, a table, and so much more. We also have slippery wedges from Arches Magoo that my son can’t get enough of sliding down. The play foam is such a great way to for kids to burn off excess energy. If we had the space in our house, I would invest in more.
2. Animals
Now we get into the farm play. My son has had a love for farms and farm animals since he was about 18 months. He loves his Schleich animals. He will set them up in little scenes around his barn (see below) and make up all kinds of fun stories for them. It is his preferred small world play.
1. Barn
My son’s number 1 favourite toy has to be his Fisher-Price barn. When we go away for a few days – he misses it and talks about when he will see it again. This barn was passed down to us from friends before my daughter was born, so it’s probably about 10 years old. My daughter used to love it too. It’s still going strong and gets used pretty much everyday in our house. Many times I have thought about buying my son a fancier barn, but this one is just so loved, it doesn’t really make sense to replace it. It’s red and his favourite colour is red. It has swinging stall doors, a grain silo he can drop things down, and it’s light-weight so he can easily take it out and carry it where he wants it. I’m not sure what other features we could really ask for.
So that’s my son’s top 6. What are some of your 3 year olds’ favourite toys?
My daughter is a generalist when it comes to toys. She likes everything, especially new and novel toys and activities, and doesn’t express strong preferences for any one thing. However, when I thought about it, there are certain toys that she does play with much more frequently than others. Here is her top 6.
6. Play Food
My kids love play food. They love to serve it to us, sell it to each other, bake and cook with it, and the list goes on. If my daughter is looking for something to do in the morning, she will often gravitate over to the play kitchen and take out some food. She doesn’t have a preference when it comes to brand, but she does love play ice cream. We have the Scoop and Serve and Scoop Ice Cream Counter and Stack magnetic set from Melissa and Doug and they both get a lot of attention, along with our Jellicat ice cream cones.
5. Dollhouse
My daughter’s dollhouses are in her room and when we go upstairs after dinner, this is often her first stop. She also knows that I have a weakness for dollhouses and Maileg, so if she asks me to play, I will likely say yes. Our dollhouses are Pottery Barn that I (very, very fortunately) found on marketplace, the furniture is a combination of Maileg, Ikea, Pottery Barn, and vintage items, and the critters are Maileg.
4. Magnetic Tiles and Ball Run
What kid doesn’t like magnetic tiles? My husband and I even like playing with them. My daughter especially loves to build castles and houses with her magnetic tiles. Once the house is built, she will bring in tiny pillows, blankets, food and people to complete her pretend world. She also loves when my husband will build a ball run with her. The Picasso Tiles ball run that we have is very fun, but it does require some adult help to set up.
3. Wood Castle
This toy was a risk I took that thankfully paid off. We started my daughter’s collection of Ostheimer castle pieces a year and a half ago. These pieces are expensive, so I teamed up with some family members to buy her a few. At first, they didn’t get a lot of attention, and I was worried. But, more and more she started pulling them out to the point where they started getting used almost every day. We invested in a few more pieces for Christmas because they are so popular. I think part of the appeal is that just pulling out one tower creates an instant magical scene. They are whimsical and beautifully made (and smell amazing) and they inspire my kids (my daughter especially) to build imaginative castles and villages. They have become a clear playroom favourite.
2. Translucent Cubes
I think if there is one small toy that my daughter uses the most, it has to be the Bauspiel Lucent Cubes. I got these cubes for her as part of a Bauspiel sampler set from Scholar’s Choice and I was surprised how much she loved these cubes. They look unassuming, but they are brightly coloured, feel very smooth, have a satisfying weight, and are so open-ended. They are my daughter’s “treasures” that she uses in small world play, to decorate wooden block builds, as play candies, in sensory trays, and much more. Pretty much, whatever she is building or creating, she adds in these lucent cubes.
1. Play Couch & Foam
My daughter has lots of energy and loves sports activities. When she’s at home, she will often have a lot of excess energy to burn and so the thing she loves most in the playroom is the play couch (Nugget) and foam slippery wedges (Arches Magoo). She loves to build forts with the couch and blankets and bring her play food inside. Whenever the slippery wedges are configured into a slide, she will run straight toward it. These foam pieces take up a lot of space, but my husband and I both agree that the enjoyment the kids gets from them, makes it well worth it.
I love hearing about playroom favourites. What are some of your 5 year olds’ favourites?
Flowers are so expensive, it’s a shame to throw them out once they start declining. I had some flowers that were starting to wilt, so I froze them in a container of water and turned them into a flower ice block for sensory play.
I placed the frozen flower ice block on our Tuff Tray with a few play scarves underneath for colour and grip. Then I added my DIY Fizzy Powder, water, some bowls, scoops, pipettes, dried rose buds, soap shavings and a selection of loose parts.
I have done ice block, fizzy play before, but tried a few slight adjustments this time – and it worked better. The ice was thinner, so it was easier to separate the flowers from it and I put the ice out early on the tray so it had started to melt by the time the kids came in to play with it.
Natural add-ins (I had some dried rose buds (Sewing Seeds Play) and soap shavings that I put out)
Loose parts (the resin pieces are from Stars and Sensory and Playspiration on Instagram, the acrylic loose pieces are from Eye Spy Club)
Bowls (most from my kitchen, the eco friendly pie crust dishes are from Stars and Sensory)
Tools (pipettes, tongs, any other scoops or stirring sticks)
My Thoughts
Fun – High
The kids loved this tray. They found the frozen flowers very interesting and inviting and were very content making fizzy potions and flower soup for hours.
Engagement Time – 1 hour +
The tray stayed out for about half the day and the kids played with it on and off. I didn’t time every play session, but a conservative estimate of play time is 1 hour +.
Cost – Low
The ice flower block and DIY Fizzy Powder are inexpensive to make and you can add whatever loose parts or dried flowers you have on hand.
Effort – Medium
This activity has a fairly quick and easy set up. It doesn’t create much mess while the activity is happening – I love that about water and fizzy play. If a little water drips on the floor, it’s not a big deal. Most of the effort comes during the clean up. When the play was over, I separated all the loose parts, bowls and scoops and washed and dried them, Then I removed all the silks, rinsed them and set them aside to wash in the washing machine. Lastly, I threw the flowers in the compost and mopped up the water in the tray. All the mess stayed in the tray, so for me, the clean-up effort didn’t seem too bad.
Final Thoughts
I have discovered that ice play is great for leaving out for many hours. The ice melts and changes over time, revealing new discoveries for the kids. We left this tray out for about half the day. The kids loved tinkering with it and then being able to leave and return at will.
Fizzy Play with pipettes and tongs is always a great chance to practice fine motor skills. The pinching and squeezing is a great workout for tiny hands. By not including many ladles or tools that scoop water, it forced the kids to use the pipettes more and their skills improved throughout play.
The flowers froze beautifully and I loved being able to repurpose them into something new. I’m always a little sad when cut flowers die and this was a great way to give them a grand, final send-off. I will definitely use wilted flowers again in sensory play.
