How do you like your eggs?

Learn science, math, literacy and more with Easter eggs!

Look at the "sunny side" of all those plastic eggs you have. They make great educational tools, and are great fun. You will be surprised by how many ways you (and the kiddos) can play with them.


1. Easter sensory bin with the eggs -Spiderman loves playing with the sensory bin. 

Easter sensory bin

2. Match the halves - let the kiddos open up eggs of different colors and sizes, scatter them a bit, and let them re-make Humpty Dumpty. It takes concentration and fair amount of motor skills to line them up just so, and twist or snap them together!

3. Count 'em up - Use a number sticker or permanent marker on the eggs, and match them with objects. You could use pompoms, and to make it more interesting, match the color of the pompom to the egg. So arm yourself with 2 yellow pompoms to go with the yellow plastic egg with the "2" on it. For older preschoolers, spell the numbers - "two" instead of "2". We used the chicks from our sensory bin to count. Then Spiderman got the sand paper numbers, lined those up, and started putting right number of eggs next to each number...

4. Line 'em up - Use a sharpie, and write uppercase letter on one half, and lowercase on the other. Let them match the letters. For beginning readers, you could make word families, and see how many words your reader can make. C, H, R, M on upper halves, -at, -ug, -atch, and -ouse on the lower halves, for example. Batman can already read the words shown here, for him, it was to mix and match the halves of different eggs to form new words, like m-atch, or h-ug.

Word building with Easter Eggs

How many erasers in one egg?

 5. Make predictions - We had a bunch of small erasers in the sensory bin. That got us to thinking, how many could we fit in an egg? Choose big, medium, and small erasers (substitute filler of your choice). Ask them to predict how many of each kind might fit into the egg. Then count, and see how good of a fortune teller they were. They should be able to to see for themselves that they can fit more of the small erasers, and less of the bigger ones.


 6. Pattern power - Make patterns with then egg halves depending on what you have. The kids could stack them up like a tower, and the tallest one wins. Let the older ones come up with their own pattern. Given the eggs they have, they have to come up with a pattern that makes the tallest tower. 

Sink or Float?

7. Sink or float - Batman and Spiderman came up with hypothesis, and tested it out to see if the eggs float or sink. They got the empty ones will float right, but they were surprised to see the eggs filled with water stay at least partially afloat! Batman's conclusion - that's what happened to Captain Hook's ship when Sharky and Bones drilled a "small" hole in the ship, coz if it's too big, it would sink!
Then they had to think of how to make their ships sink completely, and spied some tiny pebbles in one of my vases. And out they came, as they were for a good cause, and down went the eggs...

Will the pebbles make the eggs sink?

7. Shake n Sound - A quick Montessori inspired sound set is shown below. Increase the number of egg depending on the complexity. Remember to choose eggs of the same size for each set (unlike me). I had the aforementioned pebbles, lentils, and rice. Shake, shake, shake, and then match the eggs with the same sound.

Sound Eggs

8. Speed Hunt - Ready, Set, Go!  Place the eggs in just one or two rooms. Winner - the one with the most eggs in 2 minutes! Turn the tables, let the kids hide them. Try to beat the winner. Batman actually used some camouflaging tricks when hiding his eggs!  

9. Shake your sillies out - Also called fine motor skills play. Fill the eggs with different motor skills. I added the number of reps for some good old fashioned math! So, "Hop, 5", "Jump 3". We had fun ones, like stick out your tongue, eat 6 raisins, cross the living room from the sofa without touching the carpet (aka, alligator pit). I had a pile of of pillow cushions placed right next to the sofa.

10. Water the letters - We had some with tiny holes, so we filled them up, and took them outside. Batman wrote some letters, chose one, and directed Spiderman to "water" that letter with his Eggy flowering can.  


11. Nesting (my favorite) - Batman came up with this all on his own. He gave me a big egg (with a shy smile) and told me it had a gift int it.I opened it up, to find an egg nested in it, and then to find another, and then a tiny pink eraser heart (from Batman's Valentine's loot bags from school) . Awww :)

Nested eggs with a special surprise!

More egg-cellent stuff here - Easter Fun!

I love the smelly eggs, and egg and spoon race (I am not saying "duh" to myself) Recycle Those Plastic Easter Eggs! 


For this post, and other fabulous Montessori ideas, and activities, check out these links.

 

Hop goes the Bunny!

Easter themed invitation to play

Here is our Easter play table!

It has a sensory bin (our Valentine themed sensory bin is still getting played with, in fact, the muffin pan from the table disappeared, and made an appearance next to the V-day sensory bin, full of pompoms in pink cupcake liners).

Let's take care of the nitty-gritties. Here's what is on the table:

• Easter crafts that the kiddos have made for everyone to enjoy :)
• Measuring spoons (for measuring, dumping, nesting, making a mess on the floor...)
• Tongs and wooden spoon
• Easter themed egg holders 
• Containers for more dumping and pouring - Easter baskets for example, mine happens to be chick shaped pails from Oriental Trading
• Assortment of plastic eggs - let the kiddos sort out the matching ends, close them with treats inside, and open and reopen them - it makes for nimble fingers!
• Muffin pan for sorting, counting, making patters, cupcakes (don't forget the liner)
• Fluffy chicks, bunnies - they are great for counting. Check this post.
• Erasers galore - we used the chocolate bunnies with vests to make some patterns...
• If you have puzzle erasers (I had the flower ones), add some in.
• Yellow chicky bouncy balls
• Some sticky slugs (very much appreciated by the boys) for some sensory fun
• And last but certainly not the least, the sensory bin 

• For the filler, I put in yellow and green lentils, and white and brown beans - I was trying to go for the garden-y sort of look
• Big sparkly green gems
• Bunny along with carrots
• The fluffy chicks
• Yellow sensory balls (use them with the tong, or play catch with them, get some exercise hunting for them under the table)
• Plastic, wooden or fabric eggs
• yellow feathers
• erasers inside and outside the easter eggs, hidden under the filler ( I had some yellow, green and orange ones that matched the color theme.

Batman was not too interested in the table. Apart from the comment that it was cute. Spider-man dived right in, filling and dumping the egg holders, opening and closing the easter eggs, filling them with treats, and hiding them for me, sorting the erasers, chicks, balls etc in the muffin pan, using the tongs to pick up the sensory balls first, and later, the erasers. We made some patters with the erasers, did some counting with the erasers as well as the chicks, and made some cupcakes.

Batman did some experiment with the easter eggs, do they sink or float when they are empty, what happens if we fill them up, what happens if they have holes in it, etc....
I will put in a separate post about it.

We played a quick memory game with the easter eggs. I showed Spider-man which egg I was hiding, and where.We started from one end of the house to other. Once all the eggs were hidden (we did 6 eggs in 6 different locations to start with), we came back to the starting point, and Spider-man had to recall which colored egg was hidden where. The six eggs we started with were all of different colors. Once he is good with 6, work your way up, and train those memory muscles. You can do lots of variations. You can start with eggs of all the same color to begin with, step it up by filling some, and keeping some empty etc. The egg-hunter has to remember which ones have treats inside.

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