Egg word families

For my pull out time with the kdis during centers we built words using Easter eggs with the "at", "un" and  one other one I can't remember, word families.  Then I sent each child home with their own set to practice making words at home.

Q-tip eggs

At our art center I put out small amounts of spring colored paint and some q-tips.  I kept going back and forth as to if i wanted the kids to draw and/or cut out their own eggs.  In the end I decided I wanted this activity to be more about he paining and I wanted the kids to make as many eggs as they wanted with out having the feel overwhelmed by all the steps.  I wanted this to be a soothing, relaxing, calming art session.

Eggs in sand

There are just so many ways to play with plastic Easter eggs!! This time we up them in sand.  One bucket of sand was totally dry.  One was wet.  Both offered many different ways to play with the eggs.

Easter Bunnies

For a large group activity we made an Easter bunny out of mainly marshmallows.  First we wrote the word eater bunny.  then we traced the bunny shape from a stencil that I made from file folders.  This was the first time I had introduced tracing - and the kids did great.

Then we glued each marshmallow on.  

Then we added eyes, nose whiskers, and drew on a mouth.

Pretty cute bunnies!

Easter water sensory play

Have you noticed that plastic Easter eggs have holes in them?  That makes them great for water play.  I put a bunch in water and then included several things to fill the eggs with.  I put in some things that would sink and some things that would float.  

It turned into quite a science experiment to see if they could fill the eggs with things that would still let the egg float.

Dramatic Play: Easter

For our Easter dramatic play I set up the same things I did for Christmas - an opportunity to play with and discover the holiday decorations and traditions.  I put out lots of eggs, baskets, grass, things to fill the eggs, cup cake wrappers, and anything else Easter "cutesie" I could find.  The children enjoyed stuffing eggs and baskets and rearranging things hundreds of times.

Egg

At circle time I passed out an egg to everyone.  As soon as you give a child an egg they want to open it to see whats inside.  They found three letters e, g, and g.  I didn't tell them what the word was or what the three letters meant.  We just started discussing them.  They knew what the three letters were and what the sounds made.  It didn't take long for one child to figure out it spelled egg.  It did take some time for all the children to put the word together correctly.  The next day I did it again and the children were able to put the word together very fast.

Egg prints

Pretty self explanatory.  

Sorting and organizing eggs

I put out a basket of all different types of Easter eggs and some cartons to organize and sort as the children desired.

I also bought these eggs - they are big (you cant tell from the picture) - there are three smaller ones inside each egg.  I just set them out on a table like this.  I didn't really have a strong idea about how the children would use them - it was just an invitation to play and discover.  The children were curious.

We had lots of sorting, categorizing, patterning, and discovery going on all week with these eggs.

Dying Easter Eggs

It is not Easter with out dying Easter eggs.  Dying Easter eggs is pretty stressful with Jason and I and our 4 kids - so I wanted to come up with a better way that the kids could do solo.  After some looking around I decided pipe cleaners was the way to go.  

It was a multi step process.  Step one - cut the pipe cleaners - this took some strong hand muscles to get through the wire.  Step two - bend them into an egg shape - this is harder than it sounds.  Step three - twist the wires around itself to hold the egg shape - repeat fro as many eggs as you want.  Then they wrote names on a bag and filled it with some Easter grass.  This was their "basket"

Then  I filled  up some cups with liquid water color and they dyed away.