I remember when I was younger we always used to do Easter crafts at school in the lead up to Easter and I distinctly remember making a paper plate Easter basket {possibly on more than one occasion}. I decided this year the girls and I would have our own crafting session at home and make some Easter egg baskets with a twist. There are so many Easter bunny crafts, so we decided to make an Easter Chick instead.
I came up with this Hatching Chick Easter Egg Basket design on a whim and raided our craft stash to see if we had the items to create what I envisaged in my head. This was a fun little craft activity to do with my girls and would also make a great Easter craft for kindy or school. The best part is they can then be used for an Easter egg hunt.
PAPER PLATE HATCHING CHICK CRAFT
Supplies to make a hatching chick
- Stapler
- Scissors
- PVA glue
- Black pen
- Sticky tape
- Orange felt pen
- White paper plates
- Yellow washable paint
- Yellow paper or cardstock
- Paint brush and sponge
- Wide ribbon {optional}
- Craft feathers
- Eye stickers
For our chicken baskets I literally raided our home craft stash and used whatever we had on hand. I had a heap of paper plates left over from a birthday party so used those even though they had pink stripes on the edges {it didn't matter because I cut the outside edges off when making the chicken section}. We're also lucky to have a huge supply of crayola washable paint on hand {if you don't have any this is hands down the best kids paint}.
We used yellow paper because that's what we already had, however I would recommend using cardstock as it's thicker, or laminate the paper hands to make them more durable. Most of the items needed can be bought quite cheaply at dollar stores or online from Etsy, Amazon or Riot if you don't already have them at home.
HOW TO MAKE A HATCHING CHICKEN EASTER EGG BASKET
1. Turn one paper plate over and draw a zig zag across the center. Cut the paper plate in half along the zig zag line. This now becomes the cracked shell half {put the spare piece aside to use as a shell for another basket}.
2. On the other paper plate carefully cut the outer rim off of half of the plate. This will become the chicken that hatches out.
3. Paint the chicken plate with yellow washable paint. If you have a wax coated paper plate you may find it's easier to paint with a sponge or by dabbing the paint on with a brush to create a speckled effect with the paint. We added a little orange paint to our yellow to make it a darker yellow to match the paper we had for the wings.
4. On the yellow piece of paper or cardstock trace around your child's hands with a pen. Cut these out and set aside as these will become the chicken wings. If you used paper you may want to laminate them to make them more durable.
5. Once the chicken plate is dry, staple the egg shell front onto it to create the basket pouch.
6. Glue some feathers onto the chicken's head with some PVA glue. We cut our feathers in half before gluing them on so they looked like new growth. Get creative and choose whatever colour you want {we did yellow, orange and red on ours}.
7. Sticky tape the hand prints onto the back of the chicken so they stick out at the side like wings. I turned the paper over so the pen lines are facing the back and can't be seen when looking at the front of the basket.
8. Stick some eye stickers on your chicken's face.
9. Draw an orange triangle for the chicken's beak.
10. Optional: Staple some wide ribbon to the back of the Easter basket so it can be hung on a door handle for Easter. Please note the ribbon probably won't hold a huge amount of weight, so be careful how many Easter eggs you fill it with.
The girls and I had so much fun making these chicken easter baskets. We made them all in the same day, the longest part was waiting for the paint to dry. Oh and trying to get the 2yr old to keep her hands still while I traced them {older children are much easier!}.
They'd be great to make in the classroom as a process art activity as they give kids the opportunity to be creative and also lots of fine motor practice while cutting, stapling, tracing the hand prints and sticking on the stickers.
MORE EASTER IDEAS FOR KIDS
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Your hatching chick is adorable. I will be featuring your post in my Easter Roundup. Thanks for sharing.
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