These are a colourful decoration to have on the table during Easter lunch. You can paint patterns, pictures, or even faces of the people at the table!

Preparing the Egg

• Gently make a hole in the bottom of the egg with a needle. Turn the egg upside down and make another hole at the top. Be careful not to crack the delicate egg shell!
• Hold the egg over a bowl, and place a straw over one of the holes in the egg. It may take a little while, but you will be able to blow the egg out of the shell through the hole at the bottom.

Painting Your Egg Shells

The first step is to create a stand, so that you can easily paint your egg. To do this, get an A4 piece of card. Cut the card, so that it is an inch wide, and the width of the A4 paper. Then, coil the card into a circle, so that it is small enough for your egg to stand on. Staple your card together – now you have the perfect stand for your egg.
To decorate your egg you can either use poster paints or acrylic paints. Don’t forget to treat your eggs with care as they will be very brittle. First, you should paint your base colour, and let it dry. Once it is dry you can paint your designs over the top.

Making one of these cute, fluffy chicks is an ideal symbol of the Easter season.
What you will need to create your decoration:

• A large ball of bright yellow wool
• An empty cereal box
• A drawing compass
• Scissors and a pencil
• Sellotape
• Orange and black felt
• Orange and black pipe cleaners

Method

1. Flatten the cereal box and put it on the table, so the blank inside is facing up.
2. Mark an X in the middle of both the large sides of the cereal box. Set your compass to 2cm using a ruler.
3. Use your compass to draw two small circles (one on each side of the cereal box, using the X as the centre for both).
4. Reset your compass to 6cm, and draw a second circle, still using the X as the centre. Do this around both of the small circles.
5. Cut around the larger 2 circles with your scissors, giving you 2 discs.
6. Now carefully cut out the inner circles, leaving you with two discs with holes in the middle.
7. Place both discs on top of each other. Cut a 1 metre length of yellow wool from the ball.
8. Thread one end of the wool through the middle of the two discs and pull it up to the edge of the discs. Fix the wool in place with Sellotape.
9. Use the length of wool that is not fixed, and firmly wrap it over the top of the disc and through the middle. Repeat this and work your way round the discs until the whole area is covered in yellow. If you run out of wool, simply start with some more. Keep wrapping the wool around the discs until you have at least three layers of wool on the discs. The more wool, the fluffier your chick!
10. Once you have enough wool on the discs, use your finger to push the wool apart at the edge of the disk so that you can get to the cardboard.
11. Slide the scissors where your finger was so that one blade is above the disc and the other is between the cardboard discs. Cut around the edge of the discs, cutting the wool that wraps round. Get an adult to assist you when using scissors.
12. Using a short strand of wool (about 40cm long), place it around the disk where you have cut the wool and then pull it between the two layers of card, tie it and pull. This will pull all the strands into what will suddenly become a pom-pom. Fasten it as tight as you can with a secure knot, leaving one long strand to come out from between the discs.
13. Now you can pull off the cardboard discs, leaving you with a bright yellow pom-pom on a string!
14. This is the body of your chick. To make the head simply make a smaller pom-pom!
15. Secure the two pom-poms together to create your chick. This can be done with glue or by just threading the two pom-poms together, with the small one on top of the large one, with a needle and length of wool.

Extra Chick Features:

• You can use the orange and black pipe cleaners to fix legs to your chick, or orange and black felt can be used to create a beak and eyes!

Add a splash of colour with this colourful table decoration. They are easy to assemble and can be as big or small as your table will allow!
You will need to collect some small branches and twigs that will be the right size for your table. Put them in a dry place for a couple of days to dry out. If they do not dry properly, the paint won’t stick to them.

What you will need:

• Dried out branches
• Old newspaper
• A selection of paint and paintbrushes (one big and one small)
• A vase
• Some ribbons or other little decorations
• A small branch with catkins on it (fresh on the day)

Creating your table decoration

1. Spread the newspaper on the table to avoid making a mess. Using your big paintbrush, paint a base colour onto your branches. You can either paint all the branches the same colour, or you can paint them different colours, it's up to you. Once painted, leave them on the newspaper to dry.
2. Once they have dried you can either leave them plain or you can paint more interesting patterns onto them with different colours with your small paintbrush. Again, leave your branches to dry after this.
3. Find a vase that will hold all the branches and arrange the branches and twigs in it. Remember, you don't need water as this is a dry display!
4. Tie some coloured ribbons onto the branches and hang any other small decorations that you may have to brighten up the display further, like little chicks or Easter eggs.
5. You can add a branch with catkins on to the display as well, or have another fresh arrangement of flowers from the garden on the table.