15 Top Tips For An Egg-citing Easter Weekend When Every Day Feels Like A Bank Holiday

We may be missing out on a few of our favourite Easter traditions this year, like going on a National Trust egg hunt or setting off on an Easter getaway, but we can do our best to make this weekend a special one at home.

Here's our guide to activities the whole family can get involved in to make it as eggs-traordinary as possible.

1. Colour In Your Own Easter Eggs

Join the Kidadl Hunt and print out our free Easter egg colouring sheets. Now it's time to get creative!

Grab your colouring pencils, felt tips, crayons, glitter glue, even pipe cleaners and decorate your eggs however you'd like. When you've finished your masterpieces, stick them up all over the house and share them on social media with the hashtag #KidadlHunt so that the whole world can see!

2. Decorate The House With Bunting

If you're at home for Easter, you might as well make it look pretty! Use this time to get into the spirit and decorate your house with DIY bunting.

Cut out Easter egg shapes from paper or card (we've got a template you can print here) and decorate them.

Using a hole punch, make a hole at the top end of your egg and loop a piece of string or ribbon through the hole.

Tie it in a knot so that the egg won't shift along the string and then do the same for all the rest of paper eggs you've decorated until you have a long line of egg-shaped bunting.

3. Fingerpaint Some Chicks

Dip your thumb into yellow paint and print it onto a piece of paper. This will be your chick's body so make as many prints as you want - we think 3-5 is a good amount.

You might want to go over it a few times. Next, dip the tip of your finger into the paint and onto the paper to make the heads.

Draw legs and a beak using orange pencil and add eyes with black. Draw wings with yellow and you've now got a little family of chicks.

4. Go On An Easter Egg Hunt

What's the Easter season without an egg hunt? Collect multiple types of Easter chocolate - think small Lindt bunnies, Mini Eggs and packs of Magic Stars - and hide them around the house and garden for your kids to find. The goal is to collect as many eggs as possible.

The prize? All the chocolate they found! Click here for more egg-themed ideas.

5. Make Easter Crackers

Make your own crackers for your dinner on Easter Sunday with this super simple craft. All you need is toilet roll tubes, tissue paper, strings and small toys or sweets.

Put some sweets or mini toys into the tubes, wrap them up in tissue paper and use string to tie the ends. If you're feeling eggs-tra creative, make them like real Christmas crackers and add your own joke to make the whole family crack up!

6. Make Chocolate Nest Cakes

Cornflake cakes are a staple dessert in the Easter calendar, and the perfect way to celebrate if you've got a sweet tooth.

All you need to do is melt 100g milk chocolate, 50g dark chocolate, 50g butter and 4tbsp golden syrup together in a glass bowl over a pan of boiling water.

Take it off the heat and add 100g cornflakes (or rice pops if you don't have any) and stir it all up so that all the cereal is covered. Split the mixture into twelve cupcake cases, add Mini Eggs or Smarties as decorations and leave to set in the fridge for an hour or so.

Why not kick off your weekend by making these on Good Friday - maybe you'll have enough to last you until Easter Sunday!

7. Get Crafty And Make Egg Box Chicks

Flip an egg carton upside down and cut out each of the little 'cups'. Grab a paintbrush and paint them all yellow - they might need two coats if the paint isn't thick enough.

When the paint is dry, draw or paint a little orange beak and add two googly eyes to each one and there you have it, tiny egg carton chicks! You could set these up around the house as decorations.

8. X Marks The Spot! Find Your Easter Gift

This activity is a twist on a traditional egg hunt that's especially good for older kids. All you need to do is hide one present per child somewhere in the house.

It can be anything from a gift bag with colouring books and pens to a jar filled with Easter chocolate, or a big Easter egg. From there, make a series of clues and riddles that your child has to solve to get to their present, taking them from one clue to the next with each correct answer.

9. Decorate An Easter Tree

We'd never usually do this in April, but if you've got an artificial Christmas tree, why not get it out and decorate it for the weekend? If you don't have one, you could always decorate a tree in your garden instead.

Add fairy lights and DIY Easter ornaments and balance chocolates on the branches (only if your tree is indoors, of course) to really make the weekend feel extra special.

10. Make Jelly Eggs

If you happen to have plastic egg moulds, these would be perfect, but if not, you can use real eggshells.

If you're using real eggs, use something sharp and narrow like a skewer or the tip of a knife to pierce the shell and make a small hole.

Let the liquid pour out of this hole (collect the egg in a container so you can use it later for some baking), rinse the shells out with warm water once they're empty and then leave them to dry.

Make up some jelly mixture that's twice as strong as normal (so use half the water you normally would) in however many flavours you'd like.

When the eggshells are dry (or use your plastic moulds if you have them) use a small funnel to pour the jelly liquid in and then leave in the fridge overnight to solidify.

The next day you can peel off the shell and you'll have perfectly formed jelly eggs underneath!

11. Create An Easter Bunny Crown

All you need for this is some coloured card, glue or tape, scissors and colouring pens. Get an adult to help measure a strip of card to fit around your head - you don't need to tape it in place just yet though.

Use a pen to mark where your bunny ears should be.

Next, cut out rabbit ear shapes from the rest of your card, colour them in and stick them to your strip of card. From there, you'll be able to glue or tape the crown to the perfect size and voilà, you have your own bunny ear crown!

12. Make An Alternative Roast

It may be difficult to get hold of some of the food you'd normally eat for your Easter Sunday roast, but there are plenty of tasty alternatives you can indulge in instead.

If you've got multiple children, you could get one child to help out with each meal so that you can have some one-on-one time with each.

Kick things off with a delicious starter of soup or homemade bread, tuck into a main course of traditional lamb or quirky roast cauliflower with all the trimmings, and end the meal with a delicious slice of hot cross bun pudding with custard.

Yum!

13. Have An Egg-And-Spoon Race

Set up an egg-and-spoon race in the garden! See who can get to the finish line first while balancing an egg on a spoon. If you want to make it extra challenging, combine it with a three-legged race and see if you can still balance the egg while attached at the ankle to another person!

14. Make Easter Hampers

If you've got a basket lying around, why not turn it into a fun Easter decoration for the house? Fill it with coloured tissue paper and leave chocolate eggs in it until Easter Sunday.

If you don't have any chocolate eggs to use, make your own out of anything you can find! Scrunch up balls of tissue paper, use pompoms - anything! Decorate the basket with pipe cleaners or ribbon to give it that extra special touch.

15. Send Homemade Cards

You may not be able to see family and friends this Easter, but there's no reason why you can't send them a thoughtful note instead. Using coloured card and colouring pens or pencils, create your own personalised Easter card to send to your favourite people.

If you've got stamps at home then the next time you go outside for your daily walk you can drop it in a post box. Even if your card doesn't reach your loved ones before Easter Sunday, it's the thought that counts.