How to Make a Easter Cup Bunny

The Easter Bunny came at lunchtime today to fill our Easter cup bunnies, what a lovely surprise!

 

Here are our instructions:

 

 Draw two long bunny ears on a piece of stiff paper or thin card and colour them in.

 Carefully cut out the bunny ears.

 Spread glue on the ears then sprinkle with glitter. We always sprinkle glitter over a container, that way most of the glitter falls in the container and not on the table.

 Staple the ears onto the top of the cup, and glue on two googly eyes.

 Draw on a triangle nose and little whiskers, then glue a cotton ball or pompom onto the back of the cup for the bunnies tail.

My class took these home to use on Sunday morning to keep their Easter eggs in.

Easter Discovery

 This card says it all ... Happy Easter!

We had lots of fun today exploring different Easter activities....

 

 .... We were busy making bunny ears ....

 .... Then ordering eggs from largest to smallest ....

 .... and dyeing hard boiled eggs ....

 .... Then making a recycled Easter basket for our egg ....

 .... After that we cut and coloured our own Easter rabbits, I love how this bunny is holding a basket full of chocolate eggs.

We made pretend spring gardens with playdough and fake flowers, because one tradition of Easter is to celebrate new life and growth, and flowers grow in Spring ....

 .... Then we went outside to have 'egg' and spoon races over an obstacle course.

But a favourite activity was filling chocolate molds with chocolate ....

 .... and eating them.

Have a happy Easter.

Let the Kids Paint the House

Here are some of our entries to the Resene 'Let the Kids Paint the House' competition. 

 These pastel and watercolour paintings took us 2 sessions to complete. 

In 3 easy steps; draw a house in pencil, go over the pencil in one colour of pastel, then paint the house carefully with any colour you fancy.

 I encouraged the children to paint inside the lines and and only use one colour for each part of the painting. 

Some children stuck to the classic house shape, while others used their imagination and explored different levels and shapes for their house design.

Check out some of our other pastel and paint (or dye) artwork:

Heart Art

Swimming self-portraits

How to Draw a Bird

Cute Cow Portraits

As you can see, I love to use pastel and paint/dye resist with my class.

 

The Capital E Arts Festival

Look at what came to take us into Wellington ....

A red double-decker bus, we were super lucky and got to sit on the top deck all the way into town. 

When we arrived we were off to see The Man the Sea Saw by Wolfe Bowart in The Opera House.

Then a quick morning tea in the Wellington sun ....

 .... and we were off to a showing of Like It or Loop It with Adam Page, the kids were standing up and dancing in front of their seats.

After lunch we headed to Reading Cinemas to see Mini-Sized Square Eyes, a collection of funny short films aimed at children. The children were even spontaneously clapping at the end of some of the films!

Here are some of the short films we saw that I managed to hunt down on You Tube.

Ormie the Pig

Dot

 Gulp

On the way home I counted 4 children asleep on the bus and many more drooping heads, they were worn out after a fantastic day of shows.

If you ever get the opportunity to see these shows or others at the Capital E Arts Festival I would take it, they are amazing and very entertaining.

Off to the Big Top

We were off to the big top today for Discovery, well nearly! We created our own circus in front of J-Block and had a great time.

We sold tickets to our circus with play money....

.... made clown hats ....

.... dressed up as circus performers and animals ....

.... practised our throwing, juggling, balancing, and other circus tricks ....

(Last year a fantastic grandmother of one of the children made a whole class set of bean bags for us, they have been well used for several Discovery and PE sessions.)

.... made popcorn in personalised popcorn cups ....

.... when ate popcorn while watching our classmates perform in our circus (and between our own performances).

Some children made a miniature circus ....

.... decorated a circus book ....

 .... sewed miniature bunting ....

.... cut and folded circus animals from cardboard ....

.... and wrote circus words.

Phew, we were worn out by morning tea time!

St Patrick's Day Discovery

Our local kindy came to visit us for our Discovery session today. We tried to wear green (and so did they) while we were discovering about St Patrick's Day.

The children had a great time catching up with their kindy friends and teachers, and I loved seeing some of the new faces that will be joining us at school soon.

We were busy....

  .... making leprechaun spoon puppets ....

.... playing 'pot of gold' bean bag toss ....

.... colouring and cutting a silly shamrock person ....

....  and playing with green playdough.

We liked digging for gold coins in green goo ....

 

.... and waving magic shamrock wands ....

.... then drumming our own version of Irish music ....

....  and making a fort ....

.... gluing a paper rainbow ....

.... and lastly stamping a St Patrick's Day card with our fingers.

But the favourite part of most children's morning was eating morning tea together and playing on the playground with their friends.

Did you know?

• St Patrick died on March 17 in the year 461. He is a hero in Ireland.
• Wearing green and eating green food helps celebrate St Patrick's use of a green shamrock.
• Some places have parades to celebrate St Patrick's day.
• A leprechaun is a type of fairy that wears a green coat, has a red beard and gets up to mischief.
• Leprechauns make shoes when they are not playing practical jokes.
• Leprechauns have a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow. One gold coin for every year of their life.
• St Patrick is the patron saint of Ireland.