Easter crafts for toddlers

The Easter weekend is a wonderful opportunity to put in some real quality time with your family. Get the most out of your time together by involving your toddler – and the rest of the household – in making fun, creative Easter crafts.

Whether you're making a special treasure map for her or helping her paint eggs, remember to use materials that are child-friendly, which means rounded edges on scissors, soft paintbrushes and non-toxic washable acrylic paint.

Painted eggs

What you'll need:

Eggs, acrylic paints in assorted colours, paintbrushes, glitter, glue

• Boil the eggs for between five and seven minutes.

• Remove from heat and set to cool (make sure your child can't reach them while they're hot). 

• Squeeze the paints into small bowls and let your child paint designs and patterns onto each egg.

• Lay them out to dry on a baking sheet or flat dish.

• For a sparkly touch, mix a little glitter into glue and spread it on.

Setting up a treasure hunt

What you'll need:

Sheets of paper, coloured pens and paints, decorated eggs, baskets

• To make the treasure-hunt map: use an A5 sheet of paper and coloured pens and paints to draw a simple map of your house or back garden – wherever you're planning to hide the eggs. Use big graphics and easy-to-follow clues.

• Hide the eggs around the house or back garden, or both.

• Decorate child-sized wicker or plastic baskets with feathers, ribbons, bits of cotton wool and pom-poms, and set her off on her treasure hunt. Invite her friends around for a play date and make an afternoon to remember.

Easter bunny headbands

What you'll need:

About three sheets of construction paper (white or coloured), safe glue, glitter, ribbons, sequins, coloured pens and markers

• Use the white paper to cut out the main shape of the ears, and then cut the same smaller shape out of the coloured paper.

• Glue the smaller coloured ears onto the white ears. Let your child decorate the ears with glitter glue or sequins.

• Cut a long strip of construction paper to fit around your child's head. Let her draw patterns and pictures on the strip and then help her glue the edges together and glue the ears onto the strip.

• Let the glue dry before she tries it on.

Building memories with your toddler now is important because these are the traditions she'll be sharing with her own family one day. Happy hunting!