Easter Art

**2024 Easter blog can be found here (Free art activities for kids)

Easter eggs, Easter bunny, Easter hunt, Easter buns, Easter pyjamas, Easter stories, Easter Sunday...! It’s nearly upon us. A time that means different things in different cultures, religions, and families. In a time where so much is now different with Coronavirus effecting the world, how might Easter Sunday look at your place?

Our home, our yard, is as far as many of us will venture to ensure safe social distance due to COVID-19. For the time being, we may have very few, if any, visitors. People will come up with some very creative ways to engage in this day, especially to reassure the children that the Easter Bunny is alive and well and still able to visit. It has been reported that Easter Bunny will be allowed to cross borders and fences and even venture into houses, if need be. He will make sure he is not seen and does not get close to anyone. So the egg hunt is still on!

The eggs

In many locations, Easter Bunny was not able to get chocolate eggs to bring to the children. Some grown-ups did some panic buying, and there were no easter eggs left! So Easter Bunny got very creative and boiled up some real eggs (of which we have many because we now have chooks in our backyards). He painted these in lovely colours and encouraged the children to crack them open, scoop out the egg, and spread it on a piece of Vegemite toast!

Children could paint their own hard-boiled eggs and add them to a basket with straw, ready to be eaten on Easter Sunday. Even just filling a page with egg-shaped ovals of many different sizes, then filling each one with a different colourful pattern can be fun (search Artventure for 'Easter').

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The hunt 

If Easter Bunny has managed to obtain a collection of chocolate eggs and has hidden them around the place, obviously a box or basket or container of some sort is needed to collect them. So what have we got that we can use to make one?
# using a paper plate - decorate first with colourful patterns; snip from the edge in towards the centre, in 4 evenly spaced places, so the edges can be folded up to make the basket sides; use a stapler or tape to overlap and hold the sides up; cut a strip of cardboard from a cereal or biscuit box and staple/tape this on to make a handle
# using a food box - cut it down to size keeping some of the original shape and structure; tape it together; use some of the off-cut cardboard to make a handle; paste colourful scraps of paper from a magazine (or wrapping paper) to the sides of the box to decorate it
# using a mathematical net for a cube - open out a cereal box or similar large box or find some thick paper; with a ruler and marker draw only 5 of the 6 squares that make a cube (no lid on the box) with 3 squares in a row and 2 side squares attached to the middle square - looks like a cross shape (maybe 7cm x 7cm per square); cut a strip of cardboard and attach for a handle; paint and add thin strips of paper cut up to represent straw.

The bunny

For some extra fun, let’s take it in turns to be the Bunny. Draw the face of a rabbit (search Artventure for ‘rabbit’) on a piece of paper so it is the size of our own face. Then this can be made into a mask. Cut out the eyes so you can see where you are hiding the eggs, attach some elastic to hold it on, or just stick the mask on the end of a ruler and hold it in front of your face. Children could take it in turns to be the Bunny and hide an egg and the others need to find it - like Hide and Seek. This egg might be the hard-boiled variety.

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Eggs and new life

These egg ideas relate to the concept of new life. With the children, you could focus on which animals start life as an egg. Which comes first: the chicken or the egg? Do rabbits start life as an egg? What might have happened in the feature image at the top? Children could create illustrated stories about why a bunny delivers Easter eggs...

On Easter Sunday many celebrate new life, remembering a time in history when people thought life as they knew it had ended. This tradition started over 2000 years ago and yet today, all around the world, we are feeling that life as WE knew it has changed. So Sunday is a chance to celebrate the new things that are happening in our lives because we are being told to stay at home: things that are good, and this is different for each household.

Encourage children to think about what we are grateful for that is new. Is it the opportunity to spend more time with one or both parents? Is it the chance to play games that were forgotten about or never heard of? Is it a time to develop new skills and foster those creative, artistic talents? Is it possible to explore and enjoy every nook and cranny in the yards and space we have? Then a wonderful big drawing or painting of members of the household engaging in these activities can be stuck to the fridge or a cupboard as a reminder of the good times because we are spending our time at home.

Maybe the drawing is of children eating hot cross buns wearing new pyjamas given by grandparents because they feel too much chocolate is not good for children, having just finished their Easter egg hunt with the egg basket they made themselves.

Wherever we are and whatever we do this Easter Sunday, hopefully, our imaginations will help us be creative to do things, perhaps in new ways.

Let's make it a Happy Easter in each of our households!

Erica
Teacher and Artventure Blogger

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