April is about one thing, and one thing only: Easter! Well, maybe there’s more to April but that, but German au pair Merle and at least one of her host kids would probably agree, that Easter egg hunts, bunnies and crafts MATTER!

It doesn’t matter how – but coloring eggs for Easter is mandatory!

Spring Break and Easter are two things that my host girl has been excited for for a long time! This is why I wanted to make it special for her. You know, to make it extra fun, and definitely not boring for her! She is not my only host kid. So it can be a little difficult at times to pay extra attention to just one of your host kids in particular. But together, we made it work!

MY LITTLE BOOKWORM

We started our week out by going to the library. But half way there, I noticed that it was 30 more minutes till the library would open… So we decided to take a little detour to Starbucks! Cause you can never go wrong with Starbucks. My host girl ordered her hot chocolate all by herself, and she was very proud of herself! Admittedly, I was too. Because she’s usually a very shy kid. When we finally got to the library, she wanted me to pick up some Easter books that we could read together. We agreed on five books about Easter and bunnies. But she also wanted to get some books from her favorite series. So we ended up getting seven books from the library that day!

Books over books over books over books – sometimes you just CAN’T pick only one!

COLORING OUTSIDE THE LINES

The next day we finally got to do what Easter is really all about: coloring Easter eggs! We had a whole bunch of hard boiled eggs in the fridge. Since my host girl had never colored real eggs before, she was very excited! And I was too. It’s really fun tradition, that I was happy to share with her. What we weren’t looking forward to as much was taking care of the aftermath. We had a lot to clean up and I can tell you one thing: Make sure you cover the whole table before you get started, because the paint usually makes a huge mess!

Messy Easter fun!

Later that day we were craving some dessert. Since we didn’t have anything in the house that she liked, we ended up baking a cake. We divided the cake batter up in six equally large portions, to be able to dye it in six different colors. As you can probably tell already, we were going for a rainbow cake! Once it had cooled down a little, my host girl was ready to dive right in! She told me that she was super excited because she had never had such an amazing rainbow cake ever before.

EASTER EGG HUNT REHEARSAL

On Wednesday we took it easy, because she wasn’t feeling too well. She started the day out with a nap – as all of us should do every now and then! She felt a lot better after she had rested a little. Once she was up and fed, she let me in on a little secret: She was afraid that she would have a disadvantage on Easter, since her cousins were supposed to be part of the Easter egg hunt this year. She wasn’t looking forward to looking for the Easter eggs the same time as her cousins would, cause she was much smaller and younger than them! So we came up with a plan: I ended up hiding 12 eggs around the house that very day, so she could practice her Easter egg hunting skills! The rest of the day was spent by playing pretty much every single board and card game that she could find around the house!

Easter egg hunt rehearsal time

EASTER CRAFTS: GLITTER MERMAID EDITION

Our Thursday started our with a trip to Michael’s. For those of you who aren’t familiar: Michael’s is a huge American craft store chain. My host girl had decided that she wanted to get cracking on some Easter crafts! To her disappointment, they were all out of supplies, and since she was very upset, I suggested that we could go and check if Target had some more in stock. And we got lucky! We found some nice things that she really liked, including a little canvas with a mermaid on it that she wanted to color in. We even found a galaxy-themed slime kit that she wanted to save for the next day. Afterwards we headed to the library (again), to return all the books that we had previously got at the beginning of the week.

Glitter is the future!

And after all that pre-Easter-madness, I needed some me-time, as I needed to start packing. I was going to leave for a ten-day vacation on the following Friday night, and I hadn’t even thought about what I wanted to bring up to that point! Don’t worry, I might tell you more about that vaca of mine in my next blog post 😊

I hope I could give you an idea on what you can do with your host kids when they’re ever off from school. My host kids always love the library, doing arts and crafts, going on walks with me or just playing card or board games! We spent less than ten Dollars that week and my host girl couldn’t have been happier. It’s so easy to please the little ones, so please don’t think that you have to spend a lot of money to keep your host kids happy!

HAPPY BELATED EASTER, EVERYONE!