Textured Easter Rabbit Artwork

In an effort to try and bring something a little different to our art projects I've been adding in objects that offer some texture.  This particular craft offers texture and sensory.  The sensory comes from the smell and feel of the crushed candy cane along with the feel of the cotton.  We also learned how to do simple patterns and count higher than 20 which is what we usually count up to with my almost 4 year old.   This craft was not only fun to make but we learned through play/art!

The idea for this Easter rabbit craft came from the question of what I could do with some candy canes left over from Christmas.  That's right, Christmas!  They were not your ordinary peppermint candy canes but a Jolly Rancher package of candy canes that offered some spring like colors.  Rather than throw them out I thought I could use them in an Easter craft.

I knew I would use the candy canes as the pink ears for our rabbit so I wanted a very fine, powdery sugar and chose to crush the candy canes in a blender.

The candy canes would have been less lumpy if silly ol' me would have dried out my NutriBullet cup a tad better.  I did this right after making our morning smoothies and I failed to dry the cup thoroughly enough.  

Next came the fun part, decorating our rabbit!  We started off by gluing the rabbit onto pink construction paper and then continued spreading glue around the rabbits ears so that we could sprinkle on the crushed candy cane for the rabbits ears. By the way, these candy canes had such a sweet, fruity smell not the typical peppermint smell, which I also like, and it added to the sensory part of the craft.

Tiffany took a tiny break to sample the candy cane! 

Once the crushed candy cane was spread over the rabbits ears we put on some googly eyes and a pom pom nose.

 I included some miniature spring colored marshmallows to our rabbit which Tiffany glued around our rabbits face.  To try and incorporate some learning while doing our craft I had Tiffany try a simple pattern. I figured out beforehand how many marshmallows were needed to outline our rabbits face and then picked out 2 different colors (the bag offered a total of 4 colors) but I wanted a simple pattern.  I then asked Tiffany to make a pattern using pink and green marshmallows, she really loved this part!  Once she glued on all the marshmallows we counted how many our rabbit was wearing, 31 to be exact!

The last part was pulling apart some cotton balls and placing it around our rabbits face to act as fur (sorry missed getting pics of this part!) The cotton really made our rabbit come alive and helped make our rabbit feel soft just like a real bunny!  It also offered more texture which is what I wanted for this craft. 

Since the candy canes made the paper heavy I cut a piece of cardboard and glued it to the bottom of our construction paper.  

Our Easter rabbit is now sitting upon our mantel as we wait for Easter (and the bunny) to arrive!

Happy Easter/Spring!