Easter - In a Non Religious Form

Part of our job as teachers is so embrace and learn about every culture that every family comes from. Our roll as teachers is also to respect families, while teaching their children that curiosity is important. It's okay to accept another families beliefs, without agreeing with those beliefs. Within this blog I refer to holidays quite often but I purposefully stay away from the religious meanings of those holidays. I firmly believe that is something for a child to learn from their family - it is not my mission in life nor is it my job to instill these beliefs into children... Easter is one of the holidays that is harder to get around when it comes to religious meaning. Admittedly I haven't done much in my room this year for Easter and have focused more on Earth Day... but here are some Easter-ish ideas that i've done in the past...

Eggs in the grass is great for working on small motor skills. Cutting the string is going to help kids gain that small motor control for writing. Work those muscles... but have some fun with them too!
I am a sucker for hand prints. I just think that they are timeless. They're things that parents keep and cherish - I am by far one of those parents. I have so many hand prints from my three year old it's nuts! -- oh oh, and footprints too, in case you were wondering!
Mosaic eggs are a wonderful open ended Easter related project. You can use anything sitting around the classroom. When we made these eggs I raided the kitchen and begged our cook for her leftover foil pieces. The kids LOVED working with this new medium. Plus, preschool kids and shiny things always work out in your favor!

Something else I should mention is an awesome game I learned from a CoWorker a few weeks ago. It's called "Ickle Bickle" and would be perfect to be played with a plastic easter egg. The children all cover their eyes (or face the wall if you have lookie-loos). Take the egg and hide it in the classroom. The kids follow the simple rules of :
 You can not touch the egg
 When you find the egg you say "Ickle Bickle" and head back to your designated meeting spot (we use a star carpet)
 If the child who spots the egg first is able to go for an entire minute without any other child finding the egg they get a prize (we use stickers for the prize chart in our room) The kids quickly figure out some sneaky ways to keep others from finding the egg. It's so much fun to watch how creative they get...

It's a super simple game that is amazing around 5pm when you have some cleaning to do and need the kids to be engaged in something that isn't causing a huge mess. That's "Ickle Bickle" for ya!

As always, have an amazing Easter everyone and thank you for reading!