Craft Ideas for Kids | Mini Easter Gardens

In the run up to this Easter one simple crafting idea grew into three. The little seeds planted in one activity also grew in our imaginations, resulting in these beautiful mini Easter gardens. I'll take you through everything we did but each of these crafting ideas is a joy to do on their own.

You will need: For part one: Eggs, Soil or compost, Cress seeds or pansies. For part two: A Pysanky egg decorating kit or other Natural egg dyes. For part three: Air drying clay

Sowing seeds in an egg shell

Don't beat yourself up for having forgotten to sow your grass seeds for a lenten garden. There is still time to take your kids on a growing journey before Easter, with the busy but nature loving mum's best friend: Cress. It takes about a week to grow but if you don't even have time for that then planting pansies in the shell is another lovely option.

1. Blow an egg. Make small holes at the top and bottom of the egg with something sharp like a needle, pick away some bits of shell to make the holes bigger, poke about inside with a toothpick, then blow! Masses of fun.

2. Break a quarter or a third of the top of your egg off. (If you make the 'top' the rounder, less pointy end of the egg it gives you more surface area for the seeds).

3. Fill your egg with soil or compost.

4. Sprinkle your seeds over the soil and moisten. (Using a spray rather than pouring helps, so the seeds don't swish about).

5. Put your egg shell in a warm, sunny place and watch the seeds grow. Here are ours at day 1, day 3 and day 5:

As we watched our amazing little seeds germinate and fell in love with them more each day, we thought 'Wouldn't it be nice if our egg shells were decorated?!' So we decided to make the next ones we did even more beautiful.

With Conscious Craft being the main place to get hold of Pysanky egg decorating supplies it was high time we gave it a go. When I heard the words 'wax batik' and saw all those intricate images it felt like it was a bit out of our league but, guess what, you can totally turn this into an easy, fun and kid-friendly craft. There are already a couple of really inspirational CC blogs with step by step instructions, so I'll just give you the basics of how it all works:

Pysanky egg decorating

1. Heat your wax drawing pen over a candle and drop a little wax into it. As the wax melts it will run through a little funnel and you can draw patterns all over the surface of your egg.

Tip: The yellow and orange dyes don't show up so well on brown chicken eggs. For best results use white ones or duck eggs.

2. Drop your egg into your dye of choice.

3. Create another layer of wax patterns on your egg and then drop it into a different coloured dye.

4. When you have done as many layers and dyes as you like you can remove the wax from your egg by warming it up and wiping it away. When you see the end result you will immediately want to do another one and will soon end up with a bowlful!

I achieved this effect accidentally by not filling in the petals completely and then doing it between dyes. Can't wait to try it again next time!

With these eggs and the things we were going to plant inside them being really so beautiful, we needed something special to hold them! And, during a gorgeous afternoon of sensory play, the clay egg cups we had set out to make evolved into little gardens of their own.

Clay egg holders

1. Take a lump of clay and mould it into a cone shape.

2. Push down towards the bottom to create a flat ridge.

We found that our clay was getting stuck to the table at this point so it's probably better to get some greaseproof paper under beforehand.

3. Gently bring the edge of the ridge upwards to create a sort of lip.

4. Using something round, make an indent at the top of your cone shape, deep enough for an egg to sit in.

Your egg holder will dry out over time but we found it was fine to use the next day.

Have fun making everything look pretty! And Happy Easter to you all x