Family memories: Easter 2012

We very nearly didn’t dye eggs this year (does anyone else nearly type the wrong “dye?)

 

It’s been one of those years, but I bought eggs at the very last minute and so now we have some……..

We tried a new thing, using a “paint pad,” and I think it was rather cool.  I still haven’t found a dye set I really like yet for dunking them.  This one tends to come off on our fingers when it’s cold…….

I continued my tradition.  It’s a tradition if it happens more than once, right?

Back on track, I continued my tradition of dying a handkerchief with the dye that was spilled on the table.

I accidentally grabbed one of my embroidered handkerchiefs, but I think it makes the cross stand out more than the plain white one.

 

The next day Jeff and I had quite a lot of fun hiding eggs all over our yard.  The kids enjoyed stuffing the plastic eggs for us.  As per usual I got more candy than I intended to, and so we had quite a lot left over.  I actually only got what I had some really good coupons for this year.

 

 

And then we let the monsters loose (and let me tell you they object to being called monsters).

And oh the excitement!  They happily dumped and added all sorts of fun stuff to the pile, we declared it was a shared pile aside from the finding and everyone was happy with that.  They got their own bunnies and boxes of Robin’s eggs, aside from that it’s a communal pile (all the easier to steal from).

Mac even got in on the fun frantically digging and trying to get at something, what it was we never quite figured out, but he did find a few random bird feathers…….

After the big search, there was the accounting of what was found.  Did we find all of the “real eggs?”  Were all of the special prizes found?  And then Aunt Jenn had to find baby cousin’s presents from the kiddos (they wouldn’t let me give them at the baby shower, they had to see her reaction).  I don’t know how soon before baby cousin will want to play with a dragon, elephant, or Buzz Lightyear, but my kids think he will LOVE THEM!

Jan Brett’s The Easter Egg

Jan Brett writes some of the cutest stories, and this book is no different.  Hoppy is excited to make his first ever Easter egg to show the Easter bunny and he asks all of the different bunnies how they make theirs.  He has all sorts of wonderful ideas and then he sees a robin’s egg that has fallen out of its nest.

 

I had grand plans I was going to make suncatcher eggs.  It was going to be so cute.  We got out the paper and started tearing.  I went to the closet to get out the contact paper and it wasn’t there.  But there was wax paper.

 

So I traced an egg on the wax paper gave them a glue stick and let them have at it.  My intention was to iron it closed and tape it up.

 

 

Well, they had a different plan.  They each wanted to make two and they didn’t want to fold it over.  So, they happily made eggs, cut them out and we taped them up to our windows.  Well some of them.  The others disappeared upstairs into their rooms.

 

 

Easter fun

Well, like I said in a post that may or may not have been published by now, this is what comes of writing posts on two different computers.  I’m finishing up posting about our fun memory type posts, and this is our Easter one.

 

While I may have successfully used  natural dyes with my friend from Latvia, when I attempted to do some on my own using spices I was SO not successful, so we dug out the usual dye kit and got to dying.  The kids were quite happy.

 

Jeff showed them how to eat hard boiled eggs by dipping the end of it in salt.  Princess was the only one who really ate a lot of it.  The boys mainly used it as a salt delivery device and licked all of the salt off.

 

 

Easter Sunday we went to church and Princess showed us how she worships God.  It was the cutest thing in the world to see her like that.  I think this is one of my new favorite pictures of her.

 

Afterwards we went home and the kids helped stuff their Easter eggs.  They firmly believed that was their job.  I guess there will be no Easter bunny at this house.  I have no problem with that.

The kids had a blast finding the eggs, I got way too many this year.  I need to figure out the right ratio of eggs to kids, but everyone was happy, so it’s all good.

 

I”m not entirely sure Jeff would agree with me on that.

OH well…….

Geography: Easter in Latvia

 

 

One of the ladies who does the geography group with me is from Latvia, and she was very excited to have everyone die Easter eggs the way she did growing up, with natural dies.

 

 

You start by getting leaves, flowers and such things and wrapping them with string around the eggs.

 

After you’ve done this you put the eggs in panty hose that are tied tightly around the eggs to hold it all in place.

 

Then you put the eggs in the onion skin mixture that’s been prepared.

To prepare the onion skins mixture you boil the onion skins for 5 minutes or so the night before and then let it steep for a while (I’ve seen some blog posts say this isn’t necessary, but this is how she taught us).

 

Boil the eggs for 30 minutes, and pull the eggs out of the water and put them in cold water to cool.  That last part might just be so we could handle them in the time we had.

 

Take the egg out of it’s panty hose holder and take the string off.

Now hold up your creations and admire them.

 

Don’t they all look wonderful?  I’m planning on trying some other natural dies this afternoon with my kids (this afternoon being Good Friday when I write this post).

Math Box: Counting practice

Do your kids love Easter egg hunts?  Or just finding things?

 

Well, mine love it.  As soon as they had a valid excuse they got out the “Jesus Eggs” (also known as Resurrection Eggs, if you’re not in my family).

 

So, our math on Friday was to find the eggs and then solve the two different types of math problems:

1.  Putting the number in it’s place and gluing it down, which Superman is doing there.

and

2. Creating a math problem from the jelly beans in the egg.

 

Not too surprisingly the second one was wildly popular, but the first one was too.  So, now I need to remember to do the silly easy things more often, because it’s a great confidence booster for the boys and review of an easy skill, and good practice for the girl.

Math printable was found here.  She’s got great units for almost every holiday.

Bible Alive: Resurrection Eggs

So, we haven't done this yet, because I plan to share this with my Sunday School class, and my kids this week, but I figure if I wait to share it until after we've done it it won't be useful.

My plan is to print them on Shrinky Dink paper, and let the kids color them and then cut them out and shrink them at home.  Then they can lace it onto a bracelet or what have you……..

Oops, almost forgot to say, I got ideas for my page here (it used some different things than the usual resurrection eggs, and I figure my second and third grade students will have heard the other version A LOT!).

That’s the theory, anyways.
Click on the link to get to the coloring page.

 

Our hit of the week

Okay, as you saw in the Easter egg hunt post, that’s been wildly popular here.  Ever since then they’ve been hiding their eggs again, and finding them.  It cracks me up to see them hide the eggs, and then wander back there 2 minutes later and act totally surprised the eggs are there.  I thought to capitalize on their interest.
So, I wrote out a bunch of sentences they could read and some numbers for them to count up to and put them in the eggs.  They happily hid and found the eggs for another 30 minutes and reading and counting as we hid them upstairs, downstairs, and outside.

Science Sunday: Eggs

 

There have been a lot of posts flying around about egg experiments lately, or at least I’ve noted a few:

Children Grow, Children Explore, Children Learn did an egg experiment this fall when they learned about E.

Our Homeschool Fun read some egg books.

Joyful Learner did an experiment with eggs floating (which is what I did).
I could have sworn I’d noticed a bunch more, but apparently I didn’t actually clip them to Evernote like I thought I did.  Or I tagged them with some strange mystery tag I don’t remember.
Our supplies: eggs (both raw and hard-boiled), water, measuring cups, and salt (a lot of salt).

Hypothesis: that if we add enough salt to the water the eggs will float.  We think it will take 8 spoonfuls for the egg to float.  Of course at first their hypothesis was that the eggs would change color in the water.

We started off slowly adding a spoonful at a time, or I should say the boys were all set to dump in the whole container of salt, which they kept calling sugar.  Then they would taste it say “It tastes like salt, I like this sugar.”


 
By the time the eggs would finally float the water was pretty cloudy.  Hence, why you’re not getting any pictures of the floating eggs.  You couldn’t really see them super well.
But, we discovered it took 12 spoonfuls of salt (admittedly most of those spoonfuls were rather small) for both of the eggs to float.  I was thinking the hard-boiled egg would take less, but it didn’t, so that surprised me.
Now we get to where the kids took over the experiment.  In the Reading Rainbow Superman checked out from the library they made cars and buckled the eggs into them to see if they could keep the egg safe.  So, the boys happily started making their very own cars to do this.

Now, if that had been a less controlled crash that egg would have splattered, but you notice how very carefully he crashed his car into the sofa.
 
After all of this, they had to try a hard-boiled egg.  It was not wildly popular, and I then got requests/demands for some scrambled eggs, which is more what they’re used to.


So, Superman quite happily helped me scramble some eggs.  And just for my memory, in the pictures above it is Batman in the middle picture shelling the egg, and Superman on the right picture happily “making his egg big.”


So, what did you guys do this week?  Did anyone else do egg experiments?  I know it’s the week after Easter, but hey I just wasn’t organized.  I seem to every holiday do a lot of the holiday related stuff after the holiday.  Oh well, it’s working for us.
We’re gonna try a Blog Hop this week, because in some ways I think they work better for all of us to get more traffic because the other links are right there at the bottom of your own post.  Let me know if you like it.

For those of you who aren't sure how to do the blog hop, you click on the button saying "get the code," and copy the code, then you paste it into your post, it's best at the bottom, but you choose. This will then have the linky at the bottom of your post.