Although, speaking of achievements, I do want to share that I passed my first karate grading over the weekend. Andy and I both earned our orange belts, with merit. I’m so pleased, especially as I was having such a bad day with my endo pain that day. Eleanor also passed her grading with merit and skipped two belts! Go us!
Right, back to Easter. I wasn't sure what to do for our Easter bonnets this year, even after scouring Pinterest, but then CICO Books sent me a copy of Make Your Own Farm Animals and More: 35 Projects for Kids Using Everyday Cardboard Packaging by Tracey Radford. The girls excitedly had a look through it when it arrived and Eleanor asked if we could make some rabbits for our Easter bonnets. A theme was born!
I ended up making the animals whilst the girls were at school and to be honest I think it's a good job I did. My two are only three and five and so the animals we chose are a little small and fiddly for them to make. I think that an older child would have a great time making them independently though because the instructions are very clear. That said, it would be easy enough to enlarge the templates and adapt the instructions to make larger animals for younger children to paint.
So what did we use to make our bonnets, aside from recycling? The bonnets were from Poundland, as were the little nests around the brim. We painted them green with a mix of IKEA poster paint and PVA glue from Hobbycraft. We used lolly sticks and a glue gun to create the picket fence, gluing the sticks to some ribbon first and then painting it white.
I have some horses ready to assemble next. The girls are very keen to have a go at painting and decorating them to look like My Little Pony characters, which I thought was a good idea. I'll have to share a photo over on Instagram when we're done. We have just over two weeks off school coming up now, so expect Instagram to be a bit taken over with kid-related crafting 🙂
If you are looking for something creative to keep your children happy over Easter, I'd definitely recommend this book (and Tracey's first book Make your Own Zoo, also published by CICO Books) but be prepared to help them out especially if they're younger.
Toria
With thanks to CICO Books for sending me a copy of Make Your Own Farm Animals and More: 35 Projects for Kids using Everyday Cardboard Packaging by Tracey Radford. I was not compensated for writing this post nor for the materials I used. This post contains affiliate links. I received a copy of the book for free, but my opinions are entirely my own.
