Learning Activities Using Easter Eggs

This time of year there are plastic Easter eggs everywhere. I cleaned out my attic recently and we had so. many. eggs that I put a bunch in the donation box and we still probably have more than we need.

When the teen was younger we used plastic eggs in lots of different ways, which sent me looking for ideas for you.

Of course you can use them to hunt for just about anything, from sight words to letters to objects inside that you count.

My Preschool Place Online hides letters in the eggs and uses them as the start of a salt tray for writing practice. You can use letter magnets or printable letters with little eggs on them in the sight word activities from The Printable Princess. I like this one that’s shown, where all the letters are in the egg and the child unscrambles them to find the word. They’ve also got a cute one using sight words on the eggs, where you change the first letter and see if you’ve got a real word or a nonsense word. So cute.

An Easter egg hunt will get kids moving, but even more so if the eggs are packed with “eggs-ercises” for them to do when they open the egg. This idea is from The Seasoned Mom, and you can use her ideas for activities or write your own. They did this as an indoor activity and didn’t include hunting for eggs, but you can do it indoors or out, with one or two kids or a larger group (have each child find an egg and then everyone does the moves inside).

And we all love a good STEM activity, so let’s combine Easter eggs and learning about magnetism with this activity from Modern Preschool. My girl would have loved this one when she was little because she loved playing with magnets. It’s easy set up if you have good magnets handy, and again you can add an egg hunt component or just use this at the science table.

Be sure to check out my older post on using Easter eggs for learning activities for even more ideas!

Learning numbers actually involves a few different skills, from recognizing the shape of the number and knowing the word that goes with it to understanding one to one correspondence for counting and what order the numbers go in.

A lot of this is learned best through play and activities that get kids counting and tracing and otherwise interacting with numbers. These activities can help.

I specifically mentioned tracing above because of these number formation rhymes cards from Teaching Mama, which can be used in lots of ways to practice making the shapes of the numbers, including tracing, lining up items on the number shapes (and counting them!), using playdough to shape the numbers and so on. Each number has a little rhyme to help you remember how to make it, which is cute.

And speaking of playdough, you can find lots of playdough number mats with different themes for kids to use as they learn about numbers. Preschool Play and Learn, for example, has these cute apple themed ones that also teach one to one correspondence as you learn the numbers and count to 10.

Or use these tree-themed ones from Live Over Cs to form the numbers, count out items on a ten frame and place the correct number of items in the tree to match the number (do this with playdough, little buttons or whatever manipulatives you have on hand). Your little builders will also love these Duplo number mats from Life Over Cs, which allow you to shape the number out of blocks and count out the number of blocks that corresponds to each number.

I also love these mats from The Savvy Sparrow that include the number and the word you can trace with playdough or marker, showing how to count the number on your fingers, a tens frame and a number line.

Finger plays and counting songs are lots of fun for little ones, too, and Childhood 101 has a great collection of songs and rhymes having to do with numbers (as well as printable song cards you can use with them.

This cardboard roll number chain form Hands On As We Grow would be a fun addition to singing number songs or to use in other play and counting games. And we all love something easy to make with stuff we already have.

Older kids who already know the order of numbers can also use these connect the dot number printables from Fun Learning for Kids. Or use the shapes for playdough mats or to practice tracing even for kids who don’t know all the numbers in order yet.

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