Literary Commentary: Egg-Cellent Egg Decorating

This past Friday, I hosted an egg decorating program at the library. It was a family program where they brought the eggs and we provided the decorating supplies. I had about 90 attendees and it was a whole lot of fun!

Here's what we did:

Egg Decorating (of course): I purchased about 45 egg dye cups/tablets in total. I wanted to have enough
dye cups on hand for each child to be able to dye at least 1 egg right away. The nice thing is that the next time I do this program, I will already have the egg decorating cups and will only need to purchase the color tablets!

I also set out the following supplies:

Stickers - I just pulled out the stickers that I had on hand in my cabinet. I also found cute Easter-themed stickers at the Dollar Store.
Glitter Glue Pens - These were by FAR the most popular craft supply AND the messiest!
Crayons - Along with the little clear crayons they include in the kits, I also pulled out our storytime supply of crayons in case the kids wanted to make their eggs more colorful.
Plastic Spoons - Because there's only 1 egg dipper in the kit, I just gave each child a spoon and it seemed to work fine.
Egg Cartons - I put out a call to my coworkers to bring me egg cartons and I ended up having a TON left over! I wanted to provide them to the families who wanted something to dry/carry their eggs home in. I also provided Sharpie markers to write their names on the cartons and avoid mix-ups.
Paper Towels - These were definitely needed.

As the families arrived, I directed them to the egg decorating tables. Because I knew that some children would be finished decorating quickly while others would get more elaborate in their designs, I wanted to offer some other crafts/activities for them. So I also had:

Paper Plate Baskets: I found a cute tutorial here. Here's what my tracing template looked like which made it easier for me to make the templates for the other baskets in bulk. (Note: I didn't bother cutting off the edge of the paper plate with scalloped scissors like in the tutorial.)

I also made up 1 1/2" wide strips of cardstock for basket handles. On the craft table I set out the paper plates, scissors, tape, ribbon from our craft closet, crayons, and paper Easter grass I purchased in bulk from the Dollar Store. The parents commented on what a cute idea it was to have a basket craft to put their decorated eggs in. This craft took a little more prep on my end, but it seemed to be worth it.

Bunny Ears: Find the instructions here. I just set out the ears, paper headbands, glue sticks, markers, staplers, and cotton balls for tails.

Storytime: The original plan was to give everyone about 45 minutes to finish all three activities and then read stories and have a snack of donuts and apple juice (our program began at 10:00 a.m.) for the last 15 minutes. What we found was that some kids finished all of the activities much earlier. Luckily, I had another staff member on hand to help! While I kept myself free to help out and troubleshoot, she gathered those kids around on the floor with the snack and began to read the books I pulled. Soon, almost all of the children had gathered around to hear the stories.