Picture Book And Play is a weekly post in which we look at a picture book (or books) Peapod’s been enjoying recently and some of the play we’ve had based on it.
As Easter approaches, Peapod and I have begun some Easter themed activities, starting with our Easter cards.
I totally cheated for this one and found it on a good old g**gle search.
I have tried to find the original source to credit here, but I’m just on an endless Pinterest-Google cycle so just please know: this isn’t my own idea and I’m not being asked to use it, but I did love it. If it’s yours, shout and I’ll credit you 🙂
We had a good laugh getting the footprints done and it was a great sensory experience for Peapod!
And once we’d done the spaced out ones for the cards, he had a great time stomping round (with me holding on!) shouting “fee fi fo fum…smell blood man…be dead…grind bones make my bread!” so a bit of a bookish bonus there too!
That said, between tickly brushes, slippery paint and a wriggly toddler I’m glad there were two of us on hand to help…and even then it wasn’t without mishap 😬! Definitely one to do on the grass outside next time!
We also did a quick bunny craft which he really surprised me with.
I put out bunny templates, cotton wool balls, pritt stick, sticky eyes and scissors and, honestly, I was expecting two bits of cotton wool half-heartedly stuck to it with several mismatched eyes and probably a severed head.
But (obviously with guidance!) he carefully covered the whole bunny, stuck some eyes on in about the right place (miraculously with no help) and (with me turning the card and doing the inside fiddly bits) followed the lines to cut it out too.
He even chose to do another independently…although that did end up de-furred and with eyes on its ears some time later!!
We’ve also got some bunny painting to do at the weekend to use up the last often footprint paint! We’re going to use cotton wool to splodge, stamp and probably spread the paint over our bunnies for some colourful Easter pics!
Of course, with all these Easter bunnies on the go, we had to get some of our best bunny books out to read too.
We read Rabbit, Rabbit, Rabbit by Lorna Scobie which I’ve reviewed before here and absolutely love.
(Incidentally – I was made up that our copy of Lorna’s new book ‘Duck, Duck, Dad?’ arrived the other day but had to resist the temptation to read it as it’s Peapod’s present for his dad’s birthday so we’ll review after that!)
Next up was Hooray for Hoppy! by Tim Hopgood, another enduring favourite we’ve read for the last couple of years at this time. Read more here.
And finally, Hop Little Bunnies by Martha Mumford and Laura Hughes, which again we have reviewed before but remains a favourite.
Peapod very much enjoyed dancing his newly made bunny around the room singing “hop little bunny” too!
And just because we couldn’t possibly get to them all yesterday, here’s some more of our favourite bunny books that we’ve got in our basket at the moment!
Have you got any favourite bunny books?
Will you be making any Easter cards or crafts?
What have you been reading or playing this week?
Bellis Does Books 
I love these posts. I really enjoyed seeing your Easter crafts. S is less interested in them now. We did one when he was around pea pods age very similar to your cotton wool bunnies but we cut out a photo of S’s face for the bunny’s face. My grandad really loved his (he has quite advanced dementia at the time). I keep meaning to ask you if you have ever tried puffy paint with Peapod? You paint with it and then put in a microwave for a few seconds and it puffs up so it’s textured. S used to love doing that. It comes up on Pinterest and nothing dangerous. I think it’s just flour mixed in the paint from memory but I can find the one we used if you’re interested
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Ah thank you 😊 😊
That easter bunny with a face sounds adorable! Next year!! We sent one of the footprint-ears cards with some Easter-nest cake-making pics inside to my grandma who also has dementia and my aunt said she was looking at it the whole time they were there visiting which just felt so special.
Puffy paint sounds ace, thank you! And no we haven’t tried it but I think he’d love it. I’ll have to see if I can find a non-microwave version though as we don’t have one!
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That’s so lovely. I am sure your grandma appreciates it. My Nana (who now has dementia too) loves having photos and drawings from the children in the family.
I think you could achieve similar with a hairdryer! This is the “recipe” we used http://www.housingaforest.com/microwave-puffy-paint/
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Ooh, thanks! Yes a hairdryer is a great idea – we’ll definitely try this!
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