Easter Funschooling

 This year's Easter funschooling week was full of blessed family time making treasured memories. As I mentioned in my Easter Totschool post, my husband was off from work, so he was able to join in on our special Easter activities. Thankfully, the weather was beautiful and we were able to do all kinds of fun projects inside as well as several outdoor family projects. Easter in the South is typically a wonderful time as Spring is in full force which makes the celebrating all the more enjoyable.

This year we made a cross silhouette project. The children painted a sunset scene with paint onto white construction paper. Then we cut out of black construction paper a mound with three crosses and glued it on top of the dried painted sunsets. I think this is one of my favorite Easter projects we do.

Y'all know I love our directed drawing projects. Well here was a cute bunny that we drew for our Easter funschooling week.

Everyone really gets into the directed drawing projects around here. Seeing everyone's creative personalities come out into their drawings is so special to watch and experience. There's something so amazing about watching a child grow and evolve in their creative abilities. While we don't do regular art lessons, I do try to give the children opportunity to be creative with making sure we have necessary supplies and the encouragement to explore their creative nature.

Of course no holiday is complete without making cut-out sugar cookies.

And yes we start them young in this house. It was really sweet too, because as is usual I was multitasking when we were making cookies this year, but everyone was made sure Abby Lou got a turn to make her cookies (and no, she is not eating them yet, lol).

While it is a lot of work and mess making cut-out sugar cookies, I wouldn't trade it for anything. All the special memories we have created over the years making cookies at each holiday are priceless.

There was a time my OCD, perfection side would want to 'fix' all these cookies and make them esthetically appealing, but I've come a long way, and all I see is love, joy, and happy times with my family. It's more important for my children to have the opportunity to participate, make messes, and explore life than it is for their creations to meet the 'world's standards'.

My older children made these editable bird nests. Well, Lydia helped too by putting the eggs on, but mostly they were made by a collaboration of my big kiddos. These candy/cookies were a big hit with everyone. They were a combination of no-bake oatmeal cookies and Rice Krispie treats. Obviously a perfect combination. 

Our family dyes eggs every year. Only two dozen since we have hundreds of plastic eggs. Even though we own a ton of plastic eggs for hiding, it's just way too much fun to let go of the tradition of dying eggs. Being present and doing things with my family really is my happy place. It's not work or a burden to do these things; it's a privilege. 

Abby Lou had her first experience in dying eggs. She acted as if she knew what she was doing ~ go figure. These babies just keep getting smarter and smarter.

Finally we played a minute-to-win-it game where everyone had to stack and unstack plastic egg halves. This wasn't what I had planned for our Easter minute-to-win-it game, but it's what ended up happening when I realized the game I had planned, the younger children would not be able to play. For me it's all about including as many family members as possible in our activities. 

Life is strange and different now, I don't know if life will ever resume to what it was two months ago, but I do know that I can make an effort to keep my family's life as normal as possible. I'm thankful that this Easter we were able to pretty much keep life the same as it has always been. Did we go to church? No. but we did have church; it just happened to be at home. I refuse to stop living life amongst these uncertain times. I am 'keeping on keeping on' for the sake of my sanity and for the protection of my children. They deserve my best, and that is what they shall have. When I look back on all the pictures and videos of our Easter funschooling week, I'm so very grateful that I can create AND make these special memories with my family.

With Love & Hope,

Jennifer 

Easter Totschool

Our Easter week this year wasn't really much different than other years except for two things. The first being my husband wasn't working due to being furloughed, and the second being we could not attend physical church. Thankfully, we are not newbies to homechurching and have done it many times throughout the years. While we did miss celebrating the resurrection of our Savior with like-minded believers, there definitely was no shortage of our family acknowledging the significance of the Easter holiday.

As y'all know we love to celebrate the holidays. When planning for this year's Easter totschool week, I decided it would be a perfect opportunity to do some spring crafts along with our Easter projects. The children and I were super thrilled to have daddy home for our Easter fun week, even if it wasn't under the best circumstances. 

Our Easter week sensory box included felt bunnies, plastic grass (Easter basket filler), rubber bunnies, cloth carrots, small plastic carrots, and a wooden scooper.

Y'all know my kiddos love making the marbled pictures so for one of our Easter crafts we made marbled eggs. I cut out egg shapes from white construction paper, placed the paper in a shallow cake pan with paint squirted on the egg. We put three marbles in the pan and the children moved the pan to make the marbles roll through the paint.

I didn't realize the paint colors I had chosen resembled Mardi Gras colors until after the fact, but they turned out cute and the children had fun making them.

Next the children took plastic eggs and painted with them. 

To make sure the 'stamps' resembled eggs it took a minute to dig through all my plastic eggs and find ones that were cut long ways and not across the middle. To be honest I had never really paid attention to how plastic eggs were cut until we did this project. But, if you were curious, not all plastic eggs are cut the same way. Daddy was super sweet to get involved with several of our Easter projects this year, which made our children super happy.

I found this awesome Easter Story snack mix on Pinterest and had the children make it. As the children added each ingredient we talked about the symbolism of how it related to Jesus' death, burial, and resurrection.

I love making snacktivities with my children. It's so much fun learning through different avenues. Not all learning must be done with a text book, even if they are valuable resources. 

Making the Easter Story snack mix was a big hit with my people and I think it will be added to our Easter traditions for the foreseeable future.

Last we made these cute handprint chicks. I must admit this was not the easiest project for my age group of children. I prefer to do projects that the children can do mostly on their own. This one required a good bit of big kid/adult help.

We did quite a few Easter projects as an entire family. I will share about those projects in my next post which will elaborate more on our Easter Funschooling week. Today's post, is focused on our Easter projects that were done mostly by our youngest children. 

I know I say it pretty much every time I post about a totschool fun week, but I will say it again; I really love that I planned for these fun schooling weeks. It's allowing us to break away from our normal schedule and do some focused unschooling activities. While I will always consider us purposeful unschoolers, our normal academic routine does include a little bit more structure than our funschooling weeks. I do not consider our funschooling weeks, non-learning weeks, they're just learning weeks with a different approach.  I'm so thankfull God has given us the ability to learn through a myriad of different venues and outlets, but mostly I'm thankfully I GET to be present for all of my children's learning experiences. Homeschooling truly is the BEST.

With Love & Hope,

Jennifer