The kit included playdough, a few blueberries, a rice and pasta mix, a frying pan and spatula, and some wood butter and maple syrup pieces. I decided to add a few extra accessories from our play kitchen – so the kids would have everything they needed to mix up pancake batter, cook the pancakes and serve them.
I also thought this would be a good opportunity to talk about the ingredients in pancakes and their food sources while we played. Eric Carle’s book, Pancakes, Pancakes provided the perfect segue between pancakes and food sources. I found some free resources on Teach Nutrition that I printed and made into a simple matching game. The kids matched the food to its food source – all of them from farms of course.
The kids really adored this activity. It stayed out all weekend and was consistently played with. My 5 year old daughter asked if we could keep it out forever – lol. When I asked why, she said, “because it smells SOOO good!”
We’ve been having fun with all kinds of Easter play activities this past week. Here’s what we’ve been up to.
Easter Bunny Express – Easter Train Track
For this activity, the kids help the Easter bunny dig up the eggs and deliver them to the correct houses on the Easter Bunny Express train.
My 3 year old son loves his wooden train tracks and my daughter wanted an Easter themed activity so we did an Easter, construction, counting mash-up. I added in some learning elements that I thought would appeal to my 5 year old daughter. Honestly, my son would have been content driving the train around the track for hours, he didn’t need any extras
I made 21 cardboard eggs and 6 cardboard cup baskets. The kids could work on 1-1 correspondence (there are enough eggs for 1 to go to house number 1, 2 for house 2, etc.) and for a little extra challenge for my 5 year old, I added dots to the backs of the eggs for matching with the correct number.
I also intentionally left the egg design uncoloured so my daughter could colour them. She likes to add colour to anything neutral.
Materials
Train Tracks & trains – Brio
Tuff Tray – Scholar’s Choice
Felt Easter bunny – Sewing Seeds Play (save with code: HOUSEOFPLAY10)
Grimm’s Rainbow & Semi Circles
Grapat Spring Nins & Fancy Nins – Nest.ca
Grapat tools & felt pond – Sewing Seeds Plau
Wood bunnies and flowers – Tiny Fox Hole
2. Easter Play Dough
Play dough is always a winner for us. I ordered some new, super squishy and enticingly scented play dough from Readymade Play Canada . I have become a fast fan of this dough. I do sometimes make my own, but it doesn’t compare to the very soft and silky texture of this dough. And we loved the unique scents – dirt, fresh cut grass, lavender & rain!
I brought out the rest of our Easter play dough trinkets and accessories for some perfect Easter and spring play. Only the little Play-doh bunny stamp roller is new.
Materials
Easter trinkets and add ins – The Creative Mix Shop (from previous Tinker Tubs)
Acrylic flowers – Eye Spy Club
“Basket” tray (Cauldron/ Pot of Gold Tray)- AW and Co. (save with code: HOUSEOFPLAY10)
Easter resin paintables – Playspiration
Wood letters – Birch and Bark Natural Wood
Wood stamps – DIY
The kids love to make cakes, small world scenes and whatever else they can think of. I will leave this playdough activity out in our Art Center area until Easter so they kids can continue to create.
3. Fill an Easter Basket
In this activity, the kids could pretend they’re the Easter Bunny and fill a basket!
I love this activity – we do it every year. It’s so easy, it gives a purpose to the Easter trinkets you’ve collected over the years and it’s a fun sensory and pretend play invitation. This year I used my new Grapat Tinker Tray to organize all the trinkets, but in previous years I used a basket and filled it with whatever Easter stuff we had. The kids love to make up their own little Easter baskets and deliver them around the house. My 3 year old also thought it was fun to hide things in the crinkle paper and pick them out with tongs.
Materials
Felt carrots, chick, bunny feet, Boho Easter Bunny, felt balls – Sewing Seeds Play (save with code: HOUSEOFPLAY10)
Folkmanis puppets – Nurtured.ca
Resin bunnies – The Creative Mix Shop
Acrylic flowers – Eye Spy Club
Grapat mandala – The Bohemian Collective
Bunny bag – handmade gift
Everything else is from the dollar store or Michaels.
4. Easter Bath Surprise
We’ve also been having a little Easter fun in the bath. I added some giant pom poms, plastic eggs, silicone moulds, tongs, egg cups, straws and a strainer into a bubble bath. The kids hopped right in the bath and enjoyed all kinds of festive fun scooping and playing. Anything that helps gets the kids in the bath quicker is good for all of us, so I try to do special baths sometimes.
Materials
Everything is from Dollarama. I will add our Glo Pals light up cubes in the eggs once the kids get them on Sunday.
5. Easter Chick and Sensory Egg Puzzle
I won a beautiful sensory rice mix from Kidfolk & Co. in a giveway and wanted to think of a fun way we could use it. Since it’s bright yellow, it made me think of Easter chicks.
I used our peg board from Eye Spy Club and wove a yellow pipe cleaner through it to make the outline of a chick. The chick needed an egg and since I don’t have a cracked egg tray (although I would like one-lol) I made one out of cardboard.
I added the beautiful mix to another trofast bin along with some yellow flowers, included scoops and a nesting wood egg set. The kids can post the feathers through the peg board to make a fluffy chick, fill the cardboard egg tray with sensory mix and experiment with the materials and wooden egg containers. It will be a bright and cheery activity to leave out for the weekend.
Materials
Easter Sensory Rice Bin Filler – Kidfolk & Co.
Wood Peg Board – Eye Spy Club
Feathers, pipe cleaners – Michaels
Felt chick – Sewing Seeds Play (save with code: HOUSEOFPLAY10)
We repurposed part of our last Winter Sensory Play Tray for this activity. The kids weren’t quite ready to let go of the last activity and I like to save effort and repurpose activities when I can. So, I put the tray with the ice slide and fake snow back outside to refreeze and brought it back in when we were ready to do this activity.
I made an ice ring with frozen fruit and evergreen sprigs and some fizzy powder (recipe here). I added warm water, salt and scoops, pipettes and bowls. The kids decided to bring in some winter animals and loose parts.
Review of this activity
Overall, we found this activity to be mediocre. There were some fun elements to it, but some misses as well. Here was our experience
Enjoyment – Medium
The kids always like a fizzy activity, so they jumped into mixing the fizzy powder and water right away. They played with the tray on and off for about 5-6 hours and the play evolved from fizzy play, to melting ice, to making soup, to small world play. However, they found the fruit and evergreen ice ring confusing. They weren’t sure what to do with it and because it was difficult to get the fruit out of the ice, they lost interest in it quickly.
Learning – Low
We’ve done quite a few fizzy activities, so the science wasn’t new to them. We talked about how salt and warm water can melt ice and the kids found that interesting. Most of the learning from this activity involved fine motor skills and hand-eye coordination from working the pipette. So, for us this tray didn’t have a big learning component. That could explain why the kids didn’t find it highly engaging.
Cost – Low
We reused the ice slide and the fake snow from our last Winter Tray activity by storing the tray outside and the ingredients for the ice ring and the fizzy powder were things I had in my cupboards, fridge and freezer. The citric acid powder for the fizzy powder is inexpensive on Amazon and I’ve had the container of bubble bath for over a year – you only need a small amount.
Effort – Medium
There’s weren’t any special skills were involved in setting up this activity, just some planning ahead. I prepared the ice ring a day in advance and the fizzy powder just before doing the activity. The large tray is excellent for containing mess, so there was nothing to clean up on the ground after. The most challenging part of clean up was maneuvering the tray over to the sink to pour out the water (I definitely needed my husband’s help). There was a little spillage in the process, but thankfully water is easy to clean up. That’s why it’s one of my favourite sensory elements for kids activities.
Final Thoughts
I had a few learnings and take aways from doing this activity. I think it would be a good activity for a weekend, or any day when you can leave it out for a few hours. The lack of messiness definitely helped make this possible.
I wouldn’t repeat this activity again in the same way. I really needed to allow a lot of time for the ice to melt in order for the kids to get the most out of it. It took a few hours for the ice to start melting enough to get fruit and evergreens out, even with the help of the salt and water. The kids didn’t have enough patience to stay engaged that long. Next time I make an ice melting activity, I would make the ice thinner – so it’s easier for the kids to melt.