Plastic Easter Eggs Make Learning Fun!

This is an old post; but, it is FILLED with Plastc Egg Learning that you cannot misss!!!

Plastic Easter eggs are fun to fill, hide and hunt, but the teacher in me always sees learning possibilities in every fun toy or product I come across.

My Three Year Old is still working on her shapes. I draw common shapes like circles, squares, triangles, hearts, diamonds & stars on the eggs with a sharpie. I hide the eggs and then she shows me what she has found. She tells me what shape is on the egg. For a challenge, use a variety of colored Sharpie permanent markers and challenge your preschooler to find the red star, the blue circle and so on.

Another thing she still has not gotten is recognizing her name. I put the names on slips of paper and put them in the bag. We draw an egg from the bag, open it, and then read whose egg it is.

We also sort them into groups of like colors. Count how many of each color there are. She loves this!

Grab an egg carton and place a color dot in the carton. Have your child find the egg that matches that color and place it in the carton over the same color.

For older kiddos, place a picture on the bottom of each space in the carton and on an egg write the letter sound the picture starts with. Hide the eggs. As they find the eggs, they place their egg with the sound on it over the correct space. For example, if they found an /a/, they would put that egg in the space in the carton with an ant in it. If they found and /f/ they would place their egg in the carton with a picture of a fish in it. I do this with both of my kiddos. My daughter just tells me the letter she has found and then together we place the egg. My older son can place his eggs independently.

My six year old, loves addition problems. On one side of the egg I write a problem and on the other side I write the answer... he has to put the eggs together to find the answer. When he is done, I check quickly to make sure he got the correct answer. Something fun for him to do while I make dinner!!

Similar, put rhyming words on the eggs. They must match up the word to a word it rhymes with. Perfect skill for k-2 grades!!!

We also put sentences in 4 eggs. We hid the eggs. My son found the eggs and read each sentence and put the sentences in order. Then reread the story he had made... For example:

1.) First we have Palm Sunday.

2.) Next we have Good Friday.

3.) Finally Easter is here.

4.) Easter Morning we go to church to celebrate!

0r

1.) Once upon a time there was a boy named Nathan.

2.) Nathan loved jelly beans.

3.) He loved them so much that he once ate 1,000 Jelly beans.

4.) His belly hurt from what he had done.

It is great seeing them manipulate the sentences to place in order. This activity works on reading and comprehension skills.

Ideal for grades 1-2. If you were doing this in a classroom (as I have in the past), you would simply place four eggs in a Ziploc baggie. The students bring the eggs back to their seat. They would open the eggs and organize the sentences in correct order. In grade two they would rewrite the sentences in their journal and illustrate the finished story.

Put spelling words or sight words in the eggs and hide them. As your child find the egg, they open it and read the word. Then they spell the word for you.

Multi Age Idea -
On a rainy day find a small puzzle --- about 25 pieces. Place a puzzle piece in each egg. My daughter (the toddler) would find the hidden egg and then give it to my six year old who would open it and try to work the puzzle as the pieces were brought to him.

As you can see all of these activities can be set-up in minutes. All you need are the eggs and the rest of the supplies you should have around your house... Go have a LEARNING blast with those eggs!!!

Eggs Around the Web

Look, there are more ideas for those little colorful buggers...

The Ramblings of a Crazy Women Shares Some Easter Egg Games

Teaching Two Shows You a Rhyming Game she made!

Learn How to Make Your Egg Hunt Educational!

Geeky Housewife shares 50 Things to Do With The Eggs!

Different Easter Egg Hunt Ideas

For Many More Fun Sping Ideas, Visit this Sping Index!!!

Boo Bingo!!! Free Halloween Printable

Getting ready for a preschool or Kindergarten Halloween party?  Then you need to download these fun Boo Bingo Halloween cards and calling cards that I recently put together to share. 

You can click here to download the files in PDF.

For more fall teaching ideas, click here!!

Back To School Scavenger Hunt

Reposting from last summer!!!

This summer has been great. We have played, played, played! The kids had a blast and kept active. My philosophy is busy kids ='s well behaved kids ='s happy momma!!! That is really how this summer went. We were super busy and I didn't have to yell much. The summer flew by. I am sad that today marked the first day of school . At the same time it is good to get some structure back to our lives.

Since this summer was such a blast and the kids were well behaved, we decided to celebrate with a Back to School Party in the park complete with games, crafts, and treats.

When the kids arrived at the park they colored a picture of a school bus. If you google Back to School Coloring, you will find lots of coloring pages to choose from.

Then we broke the kids off into teams of four and sent them on a back to school scavenger hunt. Each Team was given a team color, a map, a baggie to collect cards in, and stickers to mark their found cards off on the map.

Setting this up: A few days before the event, I went to the park and took pictures of various objects around the park. I took pictures of things all over the park; such as, sliding boards, ramps, picnic benches, signs, soccer nets, letters, numbers, swings... I took a total of 36 different pictures with the idea in mind that I wanted each of the four teams to go to nine places. Then I went home and printed each of the pictures twice. I placed nine pictures on a map of one color. Then I placed the same nine pictures on the same color and created cards of the 9 pictures. I did this four times. This way I could break the kids up into four teams (red, green, blue, and yellow). The day of the event I hung the (9 of each four colors ='s 36 cards) cards around the park. I taped the cards to their given object. So if there was a card with a picture of a swing, I taped the card to that swing.

How the kids played:

I broke the kids up into teams of colors. There was a red, yellow, green, and blue team. Each team was given a map, star stickers, and a bag for collecting their cards. The kids would look at their map and go to the given area on their map and find the matching card somewhere in the vicinity. They would then put the card in their bag and mark off the object on their map. The idea was to find all nine card on their map. Also, staying with the back to school theme, they had to find four apples of their team color to give to the teacher.

This seemed to be a hit with the kids! I would definitely do this scavenger hunt again for a birthday party or another back to school party. It worked well and it was easy to make and set-up.

Another activity that they enjoyed was the back to school relay. There were twenty kids so we split them into two teams. I set up a relay for each team member to run through.

1.)Get out of bed. (Sheet on the grass)

2.)Turn on the light. (Run over to a press light and turn it on)

3.)Eat breakfast. (Run over to lawn chair, sit down, eat a pancake)

4.) Put on backpack.

5.) Run through tunnel

6,) Jump in hoop and yell, "I am ready for school!"

7.) Run to cone (school) touch it and run back through and tag next person.

A great way to end a fun summer! I hope you had an awesome summer too!

Family Holiday Game Time!!!

Reposting my family game from two years ago... If you are looking for a game to play, feel free to steal this one! I need something new this year... Any ideas???

Just wanted to share this game I made up for my family to play on Christmas Eve 07. It was a HUGE hit with everyone. I thought I would share it & you could save it for next year or another family gathering... if you are looking for a fun family activity. I know I searched online and could only find Power Point Christmas Jeopardy and nothing too much more exciting. So I tweaked a friends idea and came up with this game. I had each family member send me (keeping their answers only to me) the name of their favorite song, favorite guilty pleasure, favorite Christmas song, a song that reminded them of the person they were buying for (we each bought for one person this year), and a song that would be a great song for our family theme song (you know, if your family was on TV, what song would start the show). I put all the songs on my ipod so that I could play them when needed throughout the 5 rounds (I only played songs in three of the five rounds and only played like 30 seconds from each song). The game sheet is attached in PDF. It is printed two sided and folded like a brochure. Below you can download it in Publisher (which you can modify to fit your family) or in PDF. Of course there were prizes for the big winners! You can get creative with that! I also burned each couple five CD's that included all the chosen songs. It was an interesting collections, to say the least... especially when your age span is 15 to 60 years. Once you open a file below, you will have a better understanding of how the game works. Hopefully one of you will enjoy this game as much as we did!!
Christmas Rock'in Game is PDF

Christmas Rock'in Game is PUB

If you have a family game idea for the holiday, please comment below... I am always looking for new ideas!!!

We also played Scene-It: which is another fun family game that can be played in teams. Below you will find links to the Scene-It games found on Amazon.

Fun Party Idea

My friend Nancy hosted a Murder Mystery Party last night. I had been to one before a million years ago with my husband and I had forgotten how much fun they are. Last night it was all girls and we had a blast laughing at each other get into character. I was very impressed with how easy it was to use the game itself... Super easy to set-up and so much fun.

The one I attended was The Lethal Luau. Seen below at Amazon.


This mystery party game has everything you need, including printed invitations and placecards, full profiles of all the characters, dialogue for different scenes in the mystery and even recipes for an authentic Hawaiian meal! For 6 to 8 players . There is also a CD that you play at different times during the game to help you keep up with what has been revealed about the characters.

Nancy had tropical glasses for our drinks, seashells lining tables, hula skirts for us to wear, and some Jimmy playing in the background. She also made a nice spread of food. I felt like I was on vacation... I got to play Holly Day and I made the character have a Southern Accent... So it was fun to play a little with the role.

Amazon has so many of these games... Below are some of the titles that looked fun and that had good reviews. I suggest you read the reviews if you are having one of theses parties... The reviewers give many helpful tips and suggestions.

Learning Fun With Food

I am getting ready to present to a group of preschool parents where one of my "bestest" gal pals teaches preschool. :) I will be discussing Kindergarten Readiness and Learning Activities Parents can create at home. One of the things I love to share with PreK through second grade parents is using food to make learning fun. I always am using food with my own 3 and 6 year old. I used it in my classroom all the time to trick the kiddos into learning!!!

Let's set the scene: Summer will be here soon and there will be a few days where you will be inside with hungry kiddos. Maybe you are at the park and need a little break from running around. You hand out a package of rainbow goldfish or your child's favorite fruit snack... The kiddos eat it quickly and run off! You could have taken advantage of so much learning fun with that little pack of goldfish or fruit snacks! Sorting, counting, graphing, talking about less and more.... Did you realize how much learning can come out of snacking?

I want to share a few of the sheets I created to make snack learning an easy job for mommy and teacher...

Here you will see my Rainbow Gold Fish Sorting, Graphing, and even an Eating Game!!!! Feel free to print the pages out and use them with your kiddos and classroom.

Pepperidge Farm makes Goldfish Colors Baked Snack Crackers. – They come in a box or bag. The colors are red, orange, yellow, green, & purple. After reading the Rainbow Fish you could use the fish for many different activities. Give each student a baggie filled with fish. Have them count and sort the fish by colors. You may also wish to have them graph the fish they have in their baggie.

How about those fruit snacks... Here is a smiley face graph and sorting sheet for you to download. I found the smiley face fruit snacks at Walmart.

My daughter doesn't like to eat fruit snacks, but she loves to sort them and then give them to big brother to eat.

Pretty soon the summer marshmallows will be out... don't forget to grab a bag for this activity!!!

Witch Brew Dice Game & Other Halloween Treats!

Witch Brew Dice Game

You Need: 2-4 players 1 dice per gameEach player needs to cut-out their playing pieces -
Click to download playing pieces!
Key - Click to download
Pot set in the center of players.

Players take turns rolling dice. They add 1 item into the pot based on the key. The person to fill the pot with their pieces first is the winner.

Graphing Spooks
Here is a graphing activity center. Which halloween character is your favorite Spook?

There are two printables to match this activity. To learn how these graphs work, please visit:

http://www.teachingheart.net/graphing1.html
Click to download manipulatives
Click to download the center sheet

Like our graphing activity? Try our Graphing Center CDROM. 100's of happy teachers!http://www.teachingheart.net/graphingcdrom.html - Order it for your child's k-2 teacher!

More Fun Halloween Activities at:
http://www.teachingheart.net/halloweenlesson.html

Rosemond -My Parenting Mentor

So a friend of mine a few years ago introduced me to John Rosemond. I thought I would share with those who read this blog. If you are looking for some great parenting advice, jump into a Rosemond book. My book club even read the book, BECAUSE I SAID SO as one of our monthly reads. I created a game to play at the book club meeting and it can be downloaded at:

http://www.teachingheart.net/rosemond.pdf