Prechool Spring Themed Recycling Projects

Easter Sunday isn't the end of all the brightly colored eggs and fun crafts around here! We still have 7 more weeks to celebrate the Easter season. The kids have a list of crafts they want to make...

Our first craft was these cute magnets we made from Plaster and re-purposed molds.

For the circles and ovals we used some ice cube molds we found at the dollar store.

The plaster took about 30 minutes to harden and then the Piwis decorated I with tempera paints and glitter.

Can you guess what we used for these little flowers?

.....A Plastic egg 'carton'. We usually buy eggs in cardboard cartons. Recently we tried a brand which holds the eggs in this crazy two layered plastic carton. It seemed like such a waste of packaging I kept it and gave it a new job as a paint tray (and went back to cardboard cartons). Cleaning it off the other day I realized the bottom of each cup had a daisy like pattern.

We are planning on making the decorations into magnets. In the meantime they have became 'rainbow rocks' for Mini Piwi's Spring train town. Our egg carton flowers also made an appearance....

Last year we made hair garlands from egg cartons. We used the same technique again. For a different effect we used paint to decorate them (instead of oil pastels) . I have big plans for these flowers in next weeks trays...



While I am on the subject of recycling....This week we made over Miss K's little scooter. Mini Piwi has always wanted to be able to ride it like her big Sis and is thrilled to say it is hers now. Unfortunately she wasn't too keen on Princesses. The before picture....

 I was considering repainting the frame but Mini Piwi liked the pink. All we had to do was remove the princess stickers. She chose stars and New Zealand fern stickers to give it some sparkle....

 Mini Piwi loves it and is determined to be able to ride as well as the 'big kids'....Miss K is excited to be using a lighter scooter. At this rate I am going to need one too just to keep up with them!

Holy week Activities Pt 2:Cooking Bible themed foods

The Piwi Kids enjoyed the Calvary Chapel Bible study lessons,  puzzles and coloring pages so much we completed 2 each day. I am seriously considering adding several each week to our regular curriculum.

We like cooking together and we tried to make some foods like Jesus and his Disciples would have eaten. We started with Dates. We made a plant based recipe from the Happy Herbivore Abroad -it tasted just like my Nana's recipe!

On Holy Thursday we made the Last supper craft from Catholic Icing.  The instructions and printables made it so easy to create a centerpiece that looks like it took forever!

The 'bread' in front of the 'table' is Un-leaved bread or Matzoh similar to that which Jesus and his Disciples ate at the Last supper. The recipe we used was from the Sunset magazine for Homemade Matzos. These huge crackers are Crisp, Light and extremely yummy!

I mixed up the Flour, salt and Olive oil (that's all it needs), divided it into 12 portions and then handed them over to the Piwis to roll out.

  

They cooked very fast 2-3 minutes on the pizza stone and they were ready! 

Matzos became Holy Thursday's Movie Afternoon snack

Thanks to our Kiwi roots It isn't the Triduum without Hot Cross Buns!  Last year I shared the recipe we use. This year were the most successful batch yet thanks to (I think) a new type of flour I switched to recently for bread making.

Every afternoon during Holy week we sat down together with a snack and watched a Movie. The majority were Veggie tales. A selection that I hadn't previously considered for this week was Rise of the Guardians. This review by Gail Finke at the Catholic exchange convinced me it was worth renting. We all loved it and it generated a lot of discussion between Miss K and I about the themes in the movie and how it related to faith.

We all learnt a lot this week and really enjoyed the time we spent together on our 'Stay-cation'.  The Piwi's, however, said their favorite part was an egg hunt and their Easter baskets (they picked the activity that involved Chocolate of course!).