Countdown to Easter

I found this idea on Pinterest and I had to make one of our own! This was a very fun project for me and Molly (5), though there were some grown-up parts I needed to do. I am very excited to start the countdown tomorrow for both of my kids, including Ben (2).

Here's what you'll need:

a cookie sheet
paint
magnets
hot glue gun
plastic Easter eggs
permanent marker or stickers
extras as desired

First, paint an old (or inexpensive) cookie sheet completely. We used an old one that was pretty beat up and painted it with satin gloss acrylic paint ... left over from when we painted Molly's room a couple years ago! You can also use spray paint, but having Molly do the painting was part of the fun! While the paint is drying, hot glue magnets to the back of twelve plastic Easter eggs. I found a pack of really neat colors at Target, but a whole pack of 18 eggs in pastels for just a buck at the Dollar Store, so we combined them so there would be twelve different colors.

Have your child apply stickers to the eggs with the numbers 1 through 12. This was a fun counting project and a quick way to add the numbers. Otherwise you can use contact paper or a permanent marker to make your numbers. You can use stickers to add "Countdown to Easter" once your tray is dry... I wrote on mine with permanent markers.

Just for extra decoration I hot-glued a fake carnation on ours, and added a couple of stickers. Add your eggs via magnet and you're done! Oh - one more thing! Don't forget to fill your eggs! You can put fun treats like stickers or candy in them... or what I did was put notes in them with a special activity to do each day. Examples of things I wrote are: "Visit the Easter Bunny"; "Decorate Easter Eggs"; and "Make a special Easter Snack".

If you'd like, you can also include the story of Easter in your countdown eggs. Here is a link to a blog I found that includes instructions:

Easter Story in Eggs

Here is a link to the original blog I got this idea from via Pinterest:

Original Easter Countdown Idea