I was put in charge of Caroline's preschool Easter Party this year. Last year, I was the host for her class Christmas party so I was unable to reuse any ideas. I quickly enlisted the help of a fellow-mother, and together, we planned what I felt was a great Easter event!
I made a menu which included - carved ham, cross hotbuns (if you haven't had these google for the recipe, they are yummy), grapes, cheese blocks, apple slices, mini carrots, and for dessert...
I made Easter Egg Cake Pops. These turned out super cute and yummy too! To display them, I poked them into styrofoam and placed them in an Easter basket. The kids (and parents) loved them. Basically, cake pops are just crushed up cake with icing mixed in and rolled into a ball (an egg in this case) and then they are dipped in chocolate and decorated...Yumm-o-licious!
I was also in charge of finding a craft. I hunted the internet, but found that most crafts centered around the Easter Bunny, and the teacher requested that we focus on a craft that helped to spread the Good News of Easter! I found a jelly bean prayer cross on Oriental Trading that was perfect and a good price...until you add shipping which was more than the craft itself! So with my fellow-mom's help, we made our own. The kids loved dipping their fingers in the paint and hearing what each color represented. We also decided to turn the cross into a fridge magnet (we have ours on our fridge now). We are hopeful that the children shared the cross poem with their parents. Just google Easter jelly bean prayer if you are interested in reading the poem.
Of course, there was an Easter Egg Hunt. Unfortunately, most of the pictures did not turn out so great. It was spitting rain when it was time for Caroline's class to go outside, so her egg hunt had to be done down the hall in the nursery wing. It was nice that they had 2 hallways and probably 5-6 classrooms to use. There were kids and eggs everywhere! My favorite moment was when Caroline turned into the first classroom (until then all of the kids had kept to the hallways), and she yelled to everyone, "Come quick!, I just hit the jackpot!!!"
We ended the party with one of the parents reading the Easter story (in an animated Children's book). The dad chosen to read was so good with the kids and so expressive. Even Andrew sat still for the reading. Caroline was so proud to introduce Andrew to all of her friends, and Andrew loved being included!
Because we had a few minutes left before carpool, we decided to do a quick jelly bean relay race. It was fun watching the kids run as jelly beans spilled all over the floor - until one boy got smart and put his hand over the spoon (hey, we didn't say there were any rules)! Andrew enjoyed being the clean up crew for the dropped jelly beans :)
