{Outdoor Play Party: Plastic Egg Hunt}

Like many of you probably did this past weekend, we had an Easter egg hunt at our house. This wasn't our big, annual Easter egg hunt party, this was just our own quiet, family egg hunt. 

The Easter bunny hid plastic eggs containing small farm animal figurines around the garden for the girls to find.

They had such fun searching for them, that I think we'll fill them up again and have another hunt! Since the eggs are plastic, we can reuse them as many times as we like :-)

(For more ideas on what to do with leftover plastic easter eggs, try this egg stacking game from Toddler Approved, or check out this list of 14 uses for plastic eggs from Scribble Doodle and Draw.)

Outdoor play needn't involve an organized play activity that requires preparation, it can be as simple as going for a family walk, or a bike/trike ride. 

But sometimes it's fun to prepare something a little out of the ordinary, like these playful ideas from the last edition of the Outdoor Play Party:

Gardening Sensory Play and Flower Shop from Growing a Jeweled Rose

Outdoor Water Ramps from Little Illuminations

We'd love for you to share your children's outdoor play related posts with us, too!

We'd appreciate it if you included a link back to this post (either in your post or sidebar) to help us spread the word about the importance (and fun!) of outdoor play! In return, we'll gladly further share your post on Facebook/ Twitter/ Pinterest. Please feel free to grab the Outdoor Play Party button from the sidebar and/or include a text link back. Please note that by contributing you are giving permission for an image and link to your post to be republished if featured. (If you have been featured, please feel free to grab the 'featured' button from the sidebar.) Share your ideas for outdoor play activities with us every other week! The linky goes live every second Friday at 12:01 GMT+1. 
And be sure to check out the outdoor play ideas at my cohosts' blogs below!

{Exploring with Dyes}

Exploring with Dyes

and Bits of Nature

 

After dying our Easter eggs this morning, the peas thought it would be fun to see what else we could dye.

So they collected leaves, petals, flowers, and rocks from the garden.

Into the dye mixture they went.

Stirring the concoctions.

The leaves didn't hold the colours at all, but the flowers and petals did, somewhat.

And they have a lovely pink rock now!

{Easter 'Bonnet' Head Bands}

We had a spontaneous idea to make some Easter bonnets for our Easter Egg Hunt party. But we didn't have any good 'bonnet' base material on hand. So we made these Easter head bands instead! I like them just as much if not more than actual hats. (But you could just as easily use hats as the base.)

I made the bands out of strips of craft foam. They're very roughly done, but once covered you can't tell. I chose foam rather than card stock because a) we had it on hand, b) I thought it would be less likely to tear during the party, and c) it's softer and more comfortable to wear. I covered this one with an Easter-y ribbon, but the others are plain.

We had a bunch of egg-shaped pieces of card left over from last year's Easter Egg Hunt when we made shaving-foam marbled egg cards. (For that I had just made an egg-shaped cardboard template then traced it to make about a million card stock eggs.)

So we all (me, Princess Pea, Sweet Pea, and Granny Pea) decorated a bunch of them, all differently. We used a mix of markers, fake petals, Japanese origami papers, tissue paper, and some cardboard shapes that we recovered from the boxes of the new Strawberry Shortcake dolls the girls just got. We were out of glue, so we just used double-sided tape for everything.

Completely mess-free! Double-sided tape is my new crafting material of choice!

Then we taped the eggs around the bands with double-sided tape.

Simple, cute, suitable for all ages, and made completely out of stuff we had on hand. Just the kind of craft I like best!

Shared at:  Kids Get Crafty

{Outdoor Play Party: We're Going to the Zoo, Zoo, Zoo!}

I really never appreciated zoos until I had children. They have so much to offer!

The animals...

The learning opportunities....

The family time....

And the playtime!

We went to one of our favourite zoos last week, the Vienna Zoo. It's the world's oldest zoo. We always have a wonderful day there, and they have the most fantastic playground! We go every spring, and have always found something new to see and do (once we even saw a baby giant panda being, er..., "made"! And the following spring we saw the new baby panda!).

What's your favourite zoo?


The last Outdoor Play Party brought us 48 ideas for playing outdoors, including these BEAUTIFUL (really, they were!) mudpies from Mummy's Busy World.

And this fun ice cube building blocks activity from Train Up A Child.

We'd love for you to share your children's outdoor play related posts with us, too!

We'd appreciate it if you included a link back to this post (either in your post or sidebar) to help us spread the word about the importance (and fun!) of outdoor play! In return, we'll gladly further share your post on Facebook/ Twitter/ Pinterest. Please feel free to grab the Outdoor Play Party button from the sidebar and/or include a text link back.Please note that by contributing you are giving permission for an image and link to your post to be republished if featured. (If you have been featured, please feel free to grab the 'featured' button from the sidebar.) Share your ideas for outdoor play activities with us every other week! The linky goes live every second Friday at 12:01 GMT+1. 

Shared at: Family Frolics