Bunnies
This is a fun and easy Easter craft for kids. We did this at a play date where the ages ranged from 20 months to 8 years old and every kid loved it! I am going to do a variation of this with and Easter Egg and more paint colors for the Sunday school class I am teaching this week. Kids love using silly things like big marshmallows to paint and that novelty is a great way to make holiday crafts like these a little more special.
- Gather your materials. You will need some big marshmallows. construction paper, scissors, white paint, glue, a plate or two and some Easter grass.

- Start by drawing and cutting out an outline of a bunny in a few different colors of construction paper. I let the kids choose the colors.

- Spread some paint on a plate and pop in the marshmallows.

- Paint!

- The marshmallows were stamping like crazy!

- My daughter ( who was the youngest) spent a good amount of time squishing her marshmallow but amazes us all that it never even grazed her mouth.

- After painting the kids chose another sheet of paper , added glue and popped the bunny on.

- Then we added a little more glue for the grass at the bottom. My son and his buddy worked together to get the stubborn glue from the bottle. This craft time was packed with the kids helping each other , both of us moms were taken aback by how we really had nothing to do but take pictures and get a paper towel for one glue spill.

- The grass got added on and my daughter peeled her bunny off a few times. Apparently she wanted to add the grass then the bunny, once that was understood it was all good.
Then we let them dry while the four played. I love how each bunny was unique. 
Easy Easter Color Match
After we did this I had a few bunnies left over, silly me wasn’t expecting my son or his buddy to want a black or red bunny so we had a few more traditionally colored Easter ones left over. I grabbed them and a few plastic eggs and my daughter and I played color match.
Short little games like these are really the bulk of our Mama directed learning. We spend a few minutes here, a few minutes there with my ideas and the rest of the time I follow her explorations. She is just starting to learn her colors so small bursts are a perfect way to introduce it.
Something any classroom teacher will tell you is that kids ( I am talking the little ones 2-5 especially) will talk and role play about holidays for what seems like months after the fact. It’s not just your 3 year old who is still talking about trick or treating at Easter , most kids play and replay holidays a long time after the adults around are done with them. So for all of you who are set to hide eggs this weekend and for those of you who do not celebrate Easter here are some great plain old bunny books for you to enjoy.
A Boy and His Bunny by Sean Bryan is magical. It’s absurd and playful and struck a chord with the goofiness that we are often partaking in at our house these days. The text is filled with dry humor but even if your child is too young to grab it’s subtlety they will still love how silly it is that this boy has a bunny on his head! The best part is the end and I don’t want to give it away but I will say a bunny isn’t the worst thing you can have on your head.
Ben’s Bunny Trouble by Daniel Wakeman is free of text but easily qualifies as an epic story. No young adventurer would be board by this book about Ben who is searching for the right planet for his bunnies. This is a great “quiet time”or ” independent reading ” book for kids who aren’t yet readers since the pages are filled with comic book like illustrations by Dirk Van Stratlen with amazing detail. This is one of those books that each time you open it you notice something new. It is however way too long for most toddlers in it’s entirety , though still fun to hunt and peck a page here or there.
Bunnies on the Go: Getting from Place to Place by Rick Walton is awesome … with one little detail that drives me bananas. Ok so the book is great , I loved the traveling theme and the text that had a page turning rhyme that revealed the next mode of transportation that the bunnies would be taking. See if you can read it before your little detectives yell it out! After a time or two you will loose with every turn of the page. That little detail I didn’t like was the bunnies riding in the bed of a pick up truck. Yes the author said it was dangerous but I just wish it wasn’t in the book at all. I still read it and yes I think it ended up being a teachable opportunity but it left me wondering what the author was thinking besides looking for a rhyme. Anyway check this one out for yourself , the great way outweighs the bad and I imagine we will be renewing this one for a few weeks!
A Bunny is Funny by Harriet Ziefert and Fred Ehrlich is a good book but not really funny like the cover claimed, perhaps quirky. It is still a wonderful book and not so much about bunnies, instead it about a lot of animals and the odd details about them that make them “funny”. The illustrations are bold and the rhyming text is natural and written in a way that will keep a wide range of ages interested in this quirky look at familiar animals that we nonchalantly accept despite their unusual features.

Bunny crafts aren’t just for Easter time, toddlers and preschoolers readily identify with these animals because so much media is directed towards them with bunny themes: books, TV , even clothing for little ones often have fuzzy little bunnies on them. So grab some cotton balls and enjoy this activity from our contributing writer Katy.
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This is a great, easy activity that you can do with your child if they have the motor skills or you can create it and then share it with them if they don’t.




Book We Enjoyed

It’s Springby Samantha Berger and Pamela Chanko. Illustrated by Melissa Sweet




















