Workingmums' guide to Easter

Like the proverbial bunny, Easter tends to hop up on working mums rather unexpectedly. While there seems interminable build-up to Christmas, Easter just arrives unannounced swifly after Mother's Day. So how can you be prepared for the next few days?

1.Easter eggs and all that jazz. This is when leaving it to the last minute almost looks like a clever strategy. There are a number of buy one get one free deals around. Inevitably your kids will all have very specific tastes in chocolate, but you could always get two of everything and keep the spare one for next year. Hide them around the house while the kids are sleeping then you can kill two birds with one stone – they get the eggs and they also entertain themselves for potentially hours, depending on how hard your clues are. For ultra brownie points invite lots of other children around so you have lots of favours to be repaid over the rest of the holiday period.
2.Easter bonnets – there are lots of shops selling Easter bonnet packs, but it can be more fun – and cheaper - to adapt any existing hat or strip of cardboard into a fantabulous creation. Stick chicks and chocolate/Haribo all over it and voila – Easter themed marvel. Organise a bonnet parade and sit back and enjoy before eating the remnants later on in the day.
3.Create Easter egg heads. Get the kids to do caricatures of their least favourite teachers. See how they get stuck in. If you are having a bad time at work you could always join in by doing your boss or annoying colleagues. Finish the activity by preparing some soldiers and chopping their heads off.
4.If Easter childcare is proving difficult and you were actually hoping that the petrol strike might give you an excuse not to get to work, take solace in the fact that you're not alone. Why not club together with other working mums in similar situations and try to help each other confront the ridiculous gap between the length of adult holidays and that of school holidays and the often exorbitant cost of holiday playschemes which your children hate anyway [your local authority will have details of subsidised schemes, though].
5.If you want advice on Easter holidays and places to go and eat or drink which are child friendly, check out www.childfriendly.co.uk, which has hundreds of reviews from around the country and many special offers.