Arts & Crafts

How Do You Celebrate Easter?

By: Jennifer Cecilia

minute activity

Ages 3+

Creativity

Fine Motor Skills

For my Catholic family, Easter is one of our favorite holidays. In our faith, Easter Sunday marks the day when Jesus rose from the dead, symbolizing a renewal of faith and providing hope for eternal life. Growing up, my family marked the entire Holy week. We attended Mass, prayed together and also celebrated by dying eggs, making baskets filled with candy, and preparing a special meal for Easter Sunday. That meal was a big deal! My family honored Lent, a term which describes a period of time leading up to Easter. In my church, Lent began on Ash Wednesday, about six weeks before Easter. Many Catholics, including my family, observe Lent by not eating meat on Fridays during this period. My mom would remind us that the Lenten practice of giving up the pleasures of meat, or another thing we enjoyed, was one way we could remind ourselves of our faith.

I celebrate Easter with my own son in many of the same ways. I see it as an especially beautiful holiday—a celebration of faith and hope. It is also important to me as an opportunity to carry on much-loved traditions, both from church and from my family. We always had a lot of guests coming for our Sunday Easter meal, and one of the ways my brothers and I helped prepare was to make Easter Eggs. These tie-dyed Easter eggs are an easy riff on the standard one-color method and gives eggs a muticolor pattern.

Whether or not your family celebrates Easter, your kids may enjoy creating tie-dyed eggs as a celebration of spring. Kids may need a a little help wrapping the eggs in strips of fabric before dying them. But they'll love the cool design and the illusion of more than one color!

What You'll Need

What to Do

Cover your work area with a thick layer of newspaper.

Tear narrow strips of cloth from the old T-shirt. Wrap the strips around a hard-boiled egg until it’s covered. Then secure the cloth strips with rubber bands.

In a cup deep enough to submerge the egg, mix ½ cup water, 1 teaspoon white vinegar, and 10 to 20 drops food coloring, per color. Or prepare the packaged egg dye according to instructions.

Place each wrapped egg in the mixture and let sit for about 20 minutes.

Remove the egg with a spoon. Take off the cloth strips and set the egg in the egg carton until dry.

Optional: Place stickers on the egg before wrapping it, and remove the stickers after taking off the cloth strips. The egg won’t be colored where the stickers were placed.

Extend the Fun

Younger kids: During the time that the eggs need to set and dry, try a letter-based scavenger hunt around the house. Make a list of five things that start with the letter E and five things that start with the letter G. Write the names of the objects on a piece of paper and add a picture of each. Then help your child find each item one at a time (though she doesn’t need to follow the list in order). If she has trouble, give her as many clues as she needs. To get you started, here are a few E and G words: earring, eraser, eye, ear, envelope, glove, glasses, grapes, grass.

Older kids: Encourage your child to experiment with color combinations. Have him write down a “recipe” for the different colors he makes—how many drops of each color he used and what the final color turned out to be. Have him star his favorite colors, and then save the recipes for next year.