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Easter card

You will need :

Sheets of A4 card, brown paper or old brown envelopes, glue, butterfly pins, felt tips.

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We send loads of cards at Christmas but very few people send them at Easter. With this card you can roll the stone away to reveal the Easter message. Fold the sheet of card in half. Cut out the shape of a cave from the brown paper using the template at childrenswork.
co.uk Stick the cave onto the card and write ‘RISEN’ or another Easter word in the cave mouth. Cut out a circle from the brown paper for the stone. Use the butterfly pin to attach the top of the stone across the top of the cave mouth – younger children may need some help with this.

Saltdough decorations

You will need :

One cup of plain flour and one cup of table salt will make enough dough for about six crosses and six eggs. You will also need spare flour, rolling pins, poster paint, paintbrushes, dessert spoons, knives, plastic drinking straws, the template of the cross from childrenswork.co.uk, cord to hang the craft up, lots of newspaper, baking trays and hand wipes.

Children often make salt dough decorations at Christmas, using cookie cutters to make stars, trees and snowmen. These Easter shapes are made by cutting round a template of the cross or, for the eggs, pressing the shape out of the dough with the scoop of a dessert spoon, and
then tidying the edges.

To make the dough, mix the flour and salt and gradually add water to make a soft dough that isn’t too sticky. Roll the dough out onto a floured surface, but don’t roll it too thin – about 5mm thick is best. Cut out the shapes and a make a hole to hang the decorations up by pressing through the dough with a plastic straw. Bake the shapes for two to three hours at about 100°C. They don’t spread out too much while cooking so you can put them quite close together on the trays. If you can, do the mixing and cutting with the children one week and take the shapes home to bake yourself, so they are ready to be decorated next time.

Since ownership rights are very important to young children, make sure that each child’s initials are scratched onto the reverse of their decoration. If it’s not practical for you to mix the dough with the children and take it home, you can make the shapes yourself and ask your group to decorate them. If you want to do this craft with a few groups, the saltdough mixture will keep for several weeks in an airtight
container in the fridge.

Easter tree decoration

You will need :

Bright paper, scissors, glue, thread, felt tips, a branch secured in a plant pot.

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We are all used to Christmas trees, but people now create Easter trees by standing a branch in a pot and decorating it with hollow eggs. You could decorate your tree with saltdough shapes or other symbols of resurrection and new life such as this starburst decoration. 

Cut out a circle about 6cm in diameter. For each circle you will need eight triangles. The ones shown are made from 6cm squares, cut in half diagonally. Stick the triangles together in pairs as shown online at childrenswork.co.uk, and then stick the pairs of triangles onto the back of the circle. If they want to, the children could write an Easter word on their sunburst. Make a hole at the top of the decoration, and hang on the tree.