"Egg-cellent" learning games with plastic eggs!

    The Easter holiday is just around the corner and I am seeing plastic eggs all over the place! From simple colorful ones, to ones with fun designs and characters, to ones in very cute shapes. I LOVE the cute carrot & bunny eggs I found at the Dollar Tree. I bought some last year and went back for more this year!
    All the cutesy eggs that are out there aren't just cute and great for Easter egg hunts and filling baskets...the little munchkin and I are discovering all sorts of fun games to play and different ways to use these little plastic eggs.
   Earlier this week, after I raided the Dollar Tree for their cute eggs, I set out baskets and activity trays of learning games for the little munchkin to do, if it sparked her interest. And I say "if" because since I have been using Montessori-inspired activity trays, I change the trays maybe every 1-1.5 weeks, depending on how fast she completes the activities and how interested (or uninterested) she is with the activity trays.

 (Read more here about how I started with my Montessori-Inspired Activity Trays in her playroom)   

   And all week long, she has been excited about the new activities and has been doing one or two activities a day.

   Here is one activity that I borrowed from Nicole over at Mrs. Ricca's Kindergarten:

    I filled each carrot egg with letter tiles (or you can use magnetic letters).

    She had to choose an egg, dump out the letters and try to put the letters in order to make a sight word. 

(To make it a little easier, I only used the 8 sight words that she has been learning)

    Once she figured out the correct spelling of the sight word, she wrote it on the carrot. 

    This recording sheet is part of an Easter FREEBIE, so head over to Mrs. Ricca's Kindergarten to grab your own copy and make any kind of game you wish! (It could be a spelling word game for older kids or a letter/ number recognition game for preschool kids) 

The ideas are endless!

    For some upper and lowercase letter identification practice, I also made a game where each carrot egg had two letters that did not match. She had to dump the eggs and match the upper and lower case letters.

There's more!! She grabbed another tray and basket with yet another egg game.

    This time she had to open each egg and sort letters from numbers. I also had her name each letter and number as she sorted it into the correct group.

And then I thought of a way to make the classic game of Memory  Match even more fun:

I bought 2 sets of these little erasers at Walmart. I filled small eggs with the erasers and we took turns opening the eggs to try and find a match.

    So, what are you waiting for? 

    Get over to the Dollar Tree and raid their Easter section! There are TONS of fun things to do with these eggs. And the best thing about all this learning fun-- very cost effective!

   And with Spring break next week, you can be sure that the little munchkin and I will be exploring a zillion more ways to have fun with plastic eggs!

 So, stay tuned!