Easter Egg Dying Tips

In a couple of days, Baby Bear and I will be dyeing eggs for Easter. If your weather is anything like ours, it will probably be a little too cold to comfortably dye the eggs outside. I've got a tip to help you with indoor cleanup! Or, maybe you don't like how overpriced those egg decorating kits are in many stores. You probably have everything you need to dye them already on hand! These are my favorite Easter egg dyeing tips, and I hope you find them as helpful as I have.

• To make your own egg dye, pour a little white vinegar in some plastic cups, one for each color you plan on using. Shorter cups with wide openings work best. Add 1-3 drops of your choice food coloring to each cup. Use spoons to lower the eggs into the dye and scoop them back out. Use empty egg cartons for drying.
• If you get a little dye on a hard surface like a countertop, and it won't wipe off completely, use a little hairspray. Spray the spots with hairspray, wipe them off, and then use a damp cloth to get rid of the stickiness from the spray.
• Use supplies like crayons, glue, glitter, markers, sequins, stamps, tempura paint, tape, and stickers to decorate the eggs. The crayons will resist the dye to make pictures. This is especially cool with white crayons because it's like writing an invisible note on the eggs. Draw a picture with glue and then add glitter, or sprinkle a little glitter while the eggs are still damp for sparkly eggs. Add stickers or tape to the eggs before dyeing them, then remove the tape or stickers once they are dry (tape resist art). If you want, redye the eggs after removing the tape or stickers to get a layered, multi-color effect.
• I haven't found a quick, simple fix for dye on hands, but frequent scrubbing and washing will get it off. The sooner you wash your hands, the shorter the time the dye remains.

Happy Easter!

Colors Unit, Part 2

After about a week and a half of working on one color per day, Baby Bear and I spent a few days reviewing the colors we had talked about and seeing what we would get if we mixed them. These were a few of Baby Bear's activities from these days:

 1.

After making a batch of no-cook playdough, I divided it into the 3 (almost) primary colors blue, yellow, and pink. Baby Bear, Papa Bear, and I worked together to mix those colors to make the secondary colors of purple, green, and orange.

Then Baby bear enjoyed mixing them all together. For awhile, we made some pretty cool tie-dye shapes with cookie cutters. Eventually, we got brown playdough, which Baby Bear also thought was cool.

2.

Using Baby Bear's play mat, we sorted the play cooking utensils and foods from his play kitchen.

3.

Since we had a special colored meal to go with each of our color days, we had a special rainbow muffin tin meal, too.

4.

This was by far Baby Bear's favorite activity, and he still asks to do this almost daily. Like with the playdough, I made the 3 primary colors using water and food coloring.

I gave Baby Bear 2 primary colors at a time along with an empty container and a dropper. He used the dropper to transfer a little of each of the 2 primary colors into the empty container to make a new, secondary color.

Once he finished making all the secondary colors, I let him mix all the colors however he wanted to see what they made. Of course, we ended with black. He loved seeing what new colors he could create!

Green Eggs and Ham

If you've spent much time on my blog, you've probably noticed my affinity for all things Dr. Seuss. Even Baby Bear's nursery has a Dr. Seuss theme. You can imagine my joy, then, when my son started requesting I read the book Green Eggs and Ham to him over and over again. :) So, I decided to focus on this book for Theodore Seuss Geisel's birthday this year. While we didn't go hog wild with the theme, we did have some fun.

On day one, we read the book and made green eggs and ham with construction paper. I cut out the pieces, and Baby Bear helped me glue the pieces for the eggs together. To make this a little more fun, we decorated the yolks with green glitter glue. The next day, once our pieces were dry, I took this matching idea from The Homeschool Den and put a slightly different spin on it. On the original post, the kids had to match lower case to lower case plates and upper case to upper case plates. For our matching game, I put the upper case and lower case letters together onto one plate so Baby Bear would associate two images belonging to each letter. To keep the game from being overwhelming, I only used the letters of Baby Bear's name. On the third day of reading Green Eggs and Ham, we made green scrambled eggs. Baby Bear thought this was very cool! I had intended on this being our last activity for the book, but this afternoon Baby Bear requested orange eggs for lunch after telling me for the umteenth time about getting to eat green eggs yesterday. We may need to continue eating strangely colored foods for a few more days as an extension activity to follow Baby Bear's peaked interest.