Easter holidays fun for families

Use up odd socks by making an Easter bunny sock puppet.  Use buttons or cut out pieces of paper or card for eyes and a nose and hey presto!  You have all you need to create your own Easter bunny puppet show.

Make Easter cards.  You can use scraps of paper, old birthday and Christmas cards, magazines etc. 

Have an evening abroad!  Choose a country, say Italy for example. Spend the afternoon making Italian flag placemats and table decorations. Look up on the internet how to say a few Italian words like hello, goodbye, please and thank you.  Get the kids involved making an Italian dinner like pizza or pasta and enjoy. There are so many countries to choose from it's a great way to encourage the children to experiment with new foods and languages. 

Make use of your local library.  It's free to join and you can borrow multiple books at a time. For a small fee you can also borrow DVD's and music CD's. 

Make a pasta picture.  A small pot of glue and a bag of dried pasta shapes can be bought very cheaply and can produce amazingly creative results. 

Have a picnic.  Prepare your lunch, lay down a blanket and enjoy your day out. If it is raining or cold, you can have an indoor picnic instead! 

Make a bunny den.  Put a sofa and chair together, drape over a sheet and put some cushions inside to make a comfy den. Take some chocs inside and have some fun!

Memory Minute - Place ten small household items on a tray or table, cover with a tea-towel.  For example, a button, keys, a cotton bud, a fork etc.  Show the items for about thirty seconds then re-cover.  Each child has a minute to write down as many items as they can.  Smaller children can reel them off and you can write them for them.  The best memory wins. 

Bat and Ball keepy-uppy - Use a soft indoor friendly ball, sponge balls are ideal.  Each child takes turns with the bat to see how many taps they can keep the ball in the air. 

Precision Roll - Find a long clear space on the floor.  Place a tin from the cupboard at one end of the room, kids at the other.  Each child has one chance to roll the ball as near to the tin as possible.  Use a tape measure to record the distance for each child, closest wins. 

Egg Collage - give each child a piece of paper and draw a big egg shape outline on it.  With a pot of paste and scraps of material or ribbon they can make their own creative picture.  For ribbon scraps raid your wardrobe and snip off all those ribbon hangers in the shoulders of tops and jumpers that often don't seem to serve a purpose and usually end up getting in the way.  Have a small prize for the best one or the best one in each age group so everyone gets to be a winner. 

Mini egg challenge - Make up a small race track or obstacle course on the floor or table. Give each child four chocolate mini eggs of the same colour and a straw.  Let each one have a turn at blowing down the straw to guide each egg in turn to the end of the course.  You could use your watch to time how long it takes for all their eggs to get "home".  To make it even more of a challenge you could tie their hands behind their backs with a scarf so they are not tempted to use them to cheat.

Easter decorations - Use paints or felt tips to decorate some eggs (you can use hard boiled or blow some if you prefer).  To do these, make small holes each end and then blow the contents into a bowl - you can use this for scrambled eggs or omelettes for tea.  As it's a good idea to rinse the eggs out and leave them to dry you might like to do this the day before the planned activity.  Keep the egg box to stand them in and it's also useful to put them in when they are drying off after being decorated.  Suggest faces with glasses, hair, beards, etc. or zig-zag patterns or just let the children's imaginations run riot.  When they're done they can be used on a plate as a decoration - perhaps with a couple of chicks on top (these are really cheap to buy in card shops or similar or make your own with yellow wool) or you could get a small twiggy branch from the garden or elsewhere and stand it in a vase and hang your eggs on with cotton or ribbon. 

Jokes - most children love telling jokes (often the same one over and over again, and it's not always funny!)  Sit down with them and think up words to do with Easter - eggs, bunnies, lambs, chicks, etc., - and see if they can make up jokes or rhymes.  Here's a few to get you started:

• How does the Easter bunny stay fit?  EGGS-ercise or HARE-robics!
• Why shouldn't you tell an Easter egg a joke?  It might crack up!
• What kind of books do bunnies like?  Ones with hoppy endings!

You might want to get baking, use this recipe below to make Easter nest cakes which are of course very yummy! 

• 225g/8oz chocolate, broken into pieces
• 50g/2oz butter
• 2tbsp golden syrup
• 75g/3oz cornflakes or shredded wheat
• 36 mini chocolate eggs

Line a twelve-hole cake tin with cake cases. Melt the chocolate pieces, butter and syrup in a glass bowl over a pan of simmering water Remove bowl from heat and stir in cornflakes or shredded wheat Divide between the cake cases Place three mini eggs on top of each cake and chill for one hour.

We hope that you enjoy your Easter fun!