Dying to Dye

The kiddos have been raring to dye Easter eggs. Hubby and I blew these out, a couple at a time. Hard work! I made my own dye with red, yellow, and blue food coloring, then mixed to get orange, green and purple. The recipe: 1/8 tsp food color; 1/2 Tbsp vinegar; 3/8 cup hot water. (This is half the original recipe, I didn't want much because we were using rags and droppers to tie-dye the eggs.
It takes lots of concentration:


They were having so much fun, I ended up hard-boiling a few, too. We used a glue-water mixture and rolled some in glitter (the glue made the color bleed, though.) We used glue dots and glitter for some polka effect. They used crayons on a couple--I added a bit of vinegar to the boiling water, they drew on warm eggs, then let it set for 30 minutes or so.
Our egg stand, inspired by this one in Family Fun. It's my cake stand on the bottom, then an upside-down plastic cup, topped with a clear plastic dessert plate.

Cultured

This is our friend Holly. She's in Africa, helping build an orphanage. With her is Rhobi, our pen and prayer pal. It's neat to hear the kids asking questions about people different than themselves and to look at a map to see where Rhobi lives. We're looking forward to our first letter!

Eggy Stuff

I finally got out all the Easter and spring books last week, and did a craft. Good for fine-motor, too. ;) I cut out egg shapes from a pop tart box, then spread glue on a strip at a time.

(Yes, Honey made this neat row all by herself!)
Too many options for Speedy.
The Princess, perfectly filling hers in.
Speedy thrilled, I finally let them mix the beans, peas and lentils together. This provided some extra fun mixing, sorting, dumping and pouring. (Yes, there were some on the floor. I try to get them to keep everything on those trays, but it doesn't always happen.)
Finished eggs! From left: Princess, Speedy, Honey. Only glitch was the glue making the eggs curl. Maybe next time I'll lay wax paper (re-used from the bag inside a cereal box) and then a heavy book on top while they dry.

Turtle-Time!

I'm trying hard to get back to doing more crafts and sensory activities with the kiddos. Last week we made turtles using small paper plates, two shades of green paint, construction paper scraps, green craft foam and glue dots. :) Inspiration from More Mom Time.

Kind of cute and springy--against the blizzardy backdrop. Yep, that's sleet frozen on the screens of our screened in porch. It started melting the same day, so was really not too bad at all.
We read The Tortoise and the Hare. And were trying to act it out one morning--I'm not sure what happened, but Speedy went pouting to his room. And only wanted to act out The Three Little Pigs (the first story we ever acted out). Princess only wanted to act out the Tortoise and the Hare. So we didn't act anything except irritated. :)

Fantastic Idea

I came across a great idea at Keeper of the Home for storing and organizing activities for keeping kiddos occupied during quiet time or when you're working with an older child on something. It's simple, but awesome! I can't wait to get some tubs together!