Is anybody else dealing with some seriously crazed kiddos lately? I’m hoping there’s something in the air and our tiny person hasn’t gone completely bonkers because she’s more than a wee bit wound up these days.

Normal, relatively quiet crafting that would normally take place around our house is not even an option at the moment. Sitting for more than a nanosecond is pure torture in the preschool universe.

I suspect it’s the onset of Spring, the warming temps, the itch to do anything but watch the rain fall. But, the reality is that the rain does fall more often than not around here. So, we’ve resorted to using our imaginations in the face of the extreme emotions that seem to have taken over lately.

As a distraction from all that is an uproar, imagination is an excellent tool. We’ve turned the living room into a pirate ship, the bathroom into a kiddie pool and – lately – we’ve taken to conjuring up some pals who we can jump into stories with, spending an hour or two in character.

We’ve done a fair number of puppets, and the tiny person was officially bored. So, after spotting some theater masks in a craft book, we decided to pick a story and make Spring animal masks just in time for Easter.

These fun, simple masquerades are a funky way to use up some old cardboard boxes and amp up the fun factor during family story time.

We took our cue from the cute kids tale Wake Up, It’s Spring by Lisa Campbell Ernst for our mask making – getting all Easter and sunshine with bunnies and chicks.

Here’s what you need:

- Cardboard

- Scissors

- A pen

- Tempera paint and brushes

- Popsicle sticks

- Hot Glue

- White Glue

- Glitter, beads, feathers, sparkles, whatever makes a cool mask.

Directions:

1. Cut out a bunny face and ears as well as a chick face and triangle for a beak. It really doesn’t have to be fancy or perfect as you are going to cover both of them in decorations which will happily hide any crazy cutting or tracing.

Once you’ve done that, paint your creatures and let them dry.

2. Use the white glue and a paint brush to spread glue all over the creature, then decorate like crazy. Be careful to keep the decorations lightweight. Hot glue (parents only) the ears or the beak on once everything is decorated.

3. Once it’s all decorated, build a bit of a support system with popsicle sticks in the back and use hot glue to adhere them. I would even add one over the top of the seam of the green and pink sticks (pictured above) for added support on the bunny. Those ears are heavy:)

Then, let the drama begin.

We did the story and then ran around as the bunny and chick for a while making up adventures, talking about what bunnies and chicks eat, why they live on the farm, what farm animals talk about.

It was pretty hilarious.

And, now, we’ve also got some pretty flashy theater masks too for those farm animal masquerade balls.:)