Read all about the crafting adventure I recently organized. There should be no doubt that I, Neo Griot, love the kids. I've got nieces and nephews... play nieces and nephews... and lil' Tre from down the street. So of course I'm always thinking of ways to get them to unplug from the Matrix and have some old fashioned fun. Just call me Morpheus because there is no spoon! Give $20 and a dollar store and like a good Americorps alum I get things done!

To keep with the Judeo Christian hegemony engulfing us I used Easter as an excuse to gather a group of wee ones for some craftastic fun. First we made paper baskets to collect our goodies in.



If you look closely you can see the sample completed basked in the middle of the table. But we all started out with a 12x12 square piece of card stock and 1 strip of paper.



I pre-measured and marked out a "tic-tac-toe" grid on all the square pieces. The kids then cut along two of the parallel sets of lines. Next, they folded the inner pieces inwards so the paper looked kind of like an "H." Then,they pulled the side pieces up and staple the flaps together and you get a basket type shape. I know this all sounds kind of confusing but it's not. If 8 year olds can follow these directions so can you. Finally, the kids stapled on the remaining strip of paper to create a handle.


The second project was food based. We decorated cupcakes to look like wee birds' nests. I found these mini-chicks at the craft store and bought them waaaay back in February because I knew they'd come in handy. How can resist something so cute? I made some lemon cupcakes ahead of time, dyed some shredded coconut green, and added some more food coloring to some plain butter cream. Mini-malted eggs stood in as mock birds eggs and the rest is delicious history!

Next up was egg dying. I know there's all this talk about naturally dying eggs but I wasn't up to it. Also, did you know you can by kits for $1 at the dollar store? I bought a few different types... We had plain old dye, a speckled egg dying kit, a "magic"/wax crayon dying kit, and a few stickers to use as stencils. The kids were all too excited to get started and the biggest challenge was waiting for the dye to dry in between steps in order to give them the speckled treatment.





Afterwards, the kids got to pick their own make and take project. The three available were: an Easter card, a finger puppet, and/or a funny bunny hat. No one chose the bunny hat. Sadly the finger puppets didn't turn out too well. It's hard to glue pom-pom balls onto pipe cleaners. In hindsight I would have just brought my glue gun.



Here's a picture of the whole gang, baskets full and before the impending sugar high.


I hope this inspires some of you out there to take the time to get crafty with the younguns in your life.