It’s officially Easter weekend! The kids and I have been busy preparing for our holiday. Recently my son asked me why not all bunnies had tails. Confused, I thought what he may have seen and where? I asked him why he asked. He didn’t have a straight answer — he’s only 4 years old. I decided to create a fun game just in time for Easter but great all year!

I explained to both my kids that we needed to help the conejito find his colita. I told him we had to toss these fuzzy tails into his bowl and if it landed then maybe it could be his. Our bunny was a boy because my son insisted the bunny was Peter Rabbit.

Here is what we used to create our Conejito sin Colita Game: 

• 2 foam sheets- 1 colored and 1 white
• A round lid- cardboard works best
• White Poms or Cotton Balls
• 2 Wiggly eyes
• Glue or glue dots
• A Marker
• Conejito Template -optional- (download below)

 DOWNLOAD TEMPLATE HERE

Let’s get started!

1- Cut a strip of foam sheet. Depending on your lid length will vary but we used a 2.5 inches wide strip. Having a gap is ok. It will get covered up with our bunny.

2-Glue around your lid. You may need to hold in place until it sticks.

3- Cut and trace your template onto the foam. Cut our the bunny shape in the colored foam and the ears in white. Glue them in place.

4- Add some wiggly eyes and a cute nose and smile. Glue to the back of your lid where the gap is. Hold in place until secure.

5-All done! Time to play!

We hope you are having a fantastic Spring season and Easter weekend. ¡Felices Pascuas!

¡Felices Pascuas! In celebration of  this traditional holiday we are sharing these Spanish language Easter cards with you! These can be printed, cut and then folded to make two different sets of cards, or even be printed on sticker paper for added fun. They would also make cute notes to share with family members and friends. Share them with your niños and see what they come up with. These cards are our little gift to you! Share and celebrate en Español!

 For a printable version of the easter cards featured above click here.

I have to admit the traditional American Easter celebration with bunnies, egg hunts and such still feels new to me. As much as I grew up with both the U.S. and Salvadoran traditions, in El Salvador Easter week was Semana Santa; and that meant a week of beach and religious celebrations.

This is honestly the first year we’ve gone all out with a visit from the Easter bunny, an egg hunt and, claro, learning how to make cascarones (confetti Easter eggs)! My girl is so privy now of the celebration because of all the input from preschool and she came home last week asking why the Bunny had never visited her house. So this year, it visited.

She also had a blast dyeing eggs, filling them with confetti and smashing them over our heads. I truly love making cascarones because at least I feel the eggs serve some type of purpose. I really have no idea what you’re supposed to do with a batch of hard-boiled, beautifully colored eggs once their use is over? Please enlighten me!

In any case, we’ve had a blast adopting this “new” tradition for our bicultural family and my girl can expect many more years of Easter bunny visits, baskets with chocolate and fun cascarones action.

Speaking of cascarones, last year Roxana wrote a post about her first time making cascaroneswith her kids and taught us how to do them. Well, that post was found by an Associated Press reporter, she interviewed Roxana and wrote a story titled “Cascarones: Latin American tradition of confetti-filled eggs expands in US” which ended up in publications such as the Washington Post and the Houston Chronicle! Now, how’s that for keeping our traditions alive?

Check out more beautiful cascarones by fellow Latina mom bloggers:

Two Good Eggs: Confetti Easter Eggs|Cascarones para Pascua {How to}

Muy Bueno Cookbook: How To Make Cascarones

Mamá Latina Tips: How To Make Cascarones: Confetti-Filled Eggs

Growing up Blackxican (on SpanglishBaby): Amiguitos Conejitos: Cascarones With a Modern Twist

Share: What is your favorite Easter/Pascua tradition?

¡Hola, todos! As a SpanglishBaby contributor for the past year, I have had the good fortune of being able to combine my passions: writing, parenting, and linguistic exploration. Now, I have the opportunity to add my primary interest and a great source of joy in my life and my son’s life: libros!

My 3-year-old son, Isaías, and I enjoy reading both translated books (such as all those by Dr. Seuss) and original Spanish titles. He is learning to read a few words in both English and Spanish, so I love the bilingual books that have large print and direct translations in order for him to compare two words side-by-side. As you all know, children change so quickly that keeping up with books that will interest them is just as difficult as keeping them in clothing that fits!

I’m thrilled to hold the title of Book Editor for SpanglishBaby. We all know how difficult it is to find Spanish and/or bilingual books for our children (and for ourselves!), but my job is to help you do just that. With my bimonthly lists of book recommendations and reviews, I hope that you can have fun sharing literature in your native – or nonnative, as in my case – language with your niños without having to search high and low for appropriate titles.

My motivation in accepting this position is not only to search for those books that currently exist, but to identify the categories in which we all need more resources: gaps in the bilingual book world. As a lifelong writer, I have a personal interest in ultimately writing Spanish or bilingual books, and this is the perfect form of research!

All of the lists I present to you will be based on a theme, as is today’s. I will be searching high and low for quality libros for all ages and on all topics. I am open to suggestions or requests for future lists or reviews, so please feel free to contact me: chelsea@spanglishbaby.com.

The following are Pascua-themed books you can get directly from La Tiendita under the category: Books & Libros | Easter/Pascua. Happy reading y ¡Feliz Día de Pascua!

Spanish and Bilingual Books for Easter/Pascua

• Huevos de Pascua (Clifford, el gran perro colorado) por Suzanne Weyn and

• La canasta pascual de Dora by Sarah Willson

• Dance of the Eggshells: Baile de los cascarones by Carla Aragon

• Saltarín y El Conejo de Pascua by Kathrin Siegenthaler

• ¿Dónde Está mi Huevo de Pascua? by Harriet Ziefert

• Clifford’s Happy Easter: Clifford y el Día de Pascua by Normal Bridwell

• Pascua by Nancy Dickmann

• La Historia de la Pascua by Patrician Pingry

• Huevos de Pascua by Kasparavicius Kestutis

• La Pascua en Todo el Mundo by Shannon Knudsen

What are you reading to your niños for Easter? Do you have any other books we can add to this list?

Truth be told, I didn’t know much about cascarones before. I’d been wanting to do something special with my daughter for Easter (Pascua), so when I heard of cascarones, I decided I’d check them out. While I must report that I’ve absolutely no skills when it comes to arts & crafts, these seemed completely doable even for an inept like myself.

I liked the concept behind the cascarones and I figured it’d be super fun for both Vanessa and Santiago. It’s funny how one of the great things about growing up Latina in the United States is that you have an unique  opportunity to adopt the traditions of Latin American countries other than your own. Even though we are not Mexican, I think we’re definitely adopting this fun tradition!

WHAT YOU’LL NEED TO MAKE CASCARONES

• A dozen eggs
• Food coloring kits to dye the eggs
• Glitter pens, stickers, jewelry, etc to decorate eggs
• Confetti
• Egg stands
• Tissue paper

SIMPLE STEPS TO MAKE CASCARONES

The first thing you need to do is make a small whole on top of each egg so you can take out the yolk and the white. The idea is to make the whole no bigger than a dime, but mine turned out more like a quarter. Oh, well! Eggs are super fragile so you have to be extremely careful. (I did this part by myself — and my husband used what I took out to make scrambled eggs for breakfast — because I think it would’ve been a disaster with Vanessa as a helper).

After letting the empty egg shells dry, you just dye them with food coloring the same way you would with regular Easter eggs.

I was a bit overwhelmed with all the different options available at Walmart to decorate Easter eggs. We bought the regular food coloring one, another one with some paint rollers so Vanessa could paint the egg shells however she wanted and one with glitter… or course!

Once we were done decorating all our eggs, we left them alone for a while so they could dry. It is particularly important to let not only the paint dry, but also the inside of the egg so the confetti doesn’t stick to the bottom.

Once the eggs are all dried up (we took them outside and let the sun help speed up the process a bit), fill each egg with a few teaspoons full of confetti. My daughter loved doing this part and her little brother was fascinated by the whole process!

Once you’ve filled up all the eggs with confetti, they’re ready to be covered up. Put glue around the hole and then take a small piece of tissue paper (we only had white so I asked my daughter to color some pieces with markers) and attach it to the top of the egg to cover the hole.

Then comes the fun part! The idea is to hide the cascarones like you would any other Easter eggs. According to tradition, when a kid finds a cascarón, he is supposed to run up to a friend and squish the egg on top of his head.

While Santiago was not too happy once he realized what was happening, the good thing — as I explained to my daughter — is that a confetti shower is supposed to bring good luck. It was hard for Vanessa to understand that one, so I just told her good things were going to happen to all of us! She loved it!

Have you ever made cascarones? What do you tell your children about them?

***Photography by José A. Guzmán

Disclosure: We received a gift card and compensation as part of the Walmart Moms program to facilitate this post. As always, all stories and opinions are our own.