E IS FOR EGG

~Punkin is 32 months old.~

Theme: Eggs

Shape: Review

Number: 12

Color: Purple

Videos: We started watching the Resurrection Eggs videos one each day. Here is the link to the first one, and you can access the other days from here.

TOT TRAYS

We do our tot trays in the mornings after breakfast. But this week, we happened to have something going on in the mornings on all but 2 days, and one of those days I had to work on something for my husband and we never got around to it. So, we only did tot trays one day this week. Therefore, I will keep out the Easter / Egg trays for next week, too. I typically set the timer for about 15 minutes and she can choose whatever she wants to do in those 15 minutes. Some days she does 3 or 4 trays, some days she chooses to stick with just one. This day she spent her whole time doing just 2 trays.

This was such a great idea that I saw HERE. I mixed up the tops and bottoms of our plastic eggs and made little egg templates that matched and placed them in the egg carton. Punkin had to find the matching "mixed up egg" and put it in the right spot in the egg carton. She loved it! Punkin used tongs to transfer mini eggs from the baby wipe container to the egg tray that I found at Dollar Tree. (It has little egg indentations to hold the eggs.) Then, she put them back in the container by pushing them through the top slot on the lid.

LEARNING ACTIVITIES

I made an egg sound shake game for Punkin. I had 6 sets of matching eggs, but I only gave her 3 at a time. We did a couple different things with them. First, I set out a set of open eggs in the top row so she could see what was in the eggs. Then, she had to shake each egg and try to decide by looking at the open ones and listening to the sound what was in each one. This was hard for her, though she got better each round. Then, I gave her 4 closed eggs and had her shake them to try to find the 2 matching sets. (I started with 6 eggs - 3 sets - but that was too hard for her.) This was a favorite of my first graders when I taught. I put stickers with different numbers, letters, and shapes on them in each section of the egg carton. I added a bright pink button and had her shake the carton. Then, she'd open up the carton and tell me what the button landed on. We used this as a fun way to review our numbers 10-12, our newer shapes (trapezoid, hexagon), and a few letters. (I had her tell me not only the letter name, but it's sound.) With my first graders, I used two jellybeans and had them add the two numbers that the jellybeans landed on.

Punkin sorted capital and lowercase Ee eggs into her egg carton. (Capital E eggs in the top row, lowercase e eggs in the bottom row.) We have always called them the "big letters" and "little letters" but this week we worked on calling them capital and lowercase.

I saw this fun idea at No Time For Flashcards. We glued an egg carton that I cut apart into the shape of an E. I took it a step further, though, and we added our capital and lowercase Ee eggs into each section.

To work on our sight words this week, I cut apart egg cartons into sections and added a sticker to each cup to spell the word. Then, she had to find the matching eggs and tell me what word she made.

We did a rather simple color sorting activity, but the main focus was on the fine motor skill of using the tweezers to pick up the pom poms and putting them into the right colored egg. For someone who used to hate tweezers, tongs, clothespins, etc. she sure does love them now! This was definitely a favorite this week!

Since Punkin loves to color these days, she enjoyed coloring this page from the Letter E printables at 1+1+1=1. Since the color words were typed in color, she could find and color the correct eggs all by herself.

Punkin also attempted this egg color by number page from Making Learning Fun. However, she only did one egg of the three and then lost interest. I found her later in the week coloring the eggs on her own.....but not necessarily coloring them by number.

Punkin LOVED this activity and even though it took awhile to do, she stuck with it enthusiastically the whole time. I simply put numbers in the bottoms of the eggs carton sections in order, then put numbers as well (1-12) on plastic eggs. Punkin then had to pick an egg from the basket, fill it with that many little beads, close it (and of course shake each one), and then put it in the matching section of the egg carton.

I printed out a page of eggs and wrote numbers 10-12 on the eggs. Punkin then used some leftover ring circle stickers to find and put a sticker in the bottom section of all the number 12 eggs.

ART / CRAFTS

Punkin obviously enjoyed the marshmallow egg craft that we did (found over at No Time For Flashcards) because she got to eat marshmallows while she worked. First, I had her sort all the colors into an egg carton, and then, she meticulously set them on the glue outlines that I made for her.

The pretty final outcome. (The colors are actually much more vibrant in person than in the picture, so it really does look very pretty hanging on the fridge....up high of course where she can't rip off the marshmallows to eat!)

This "suncatcher egg" also looks very pretty hanging in our window. I will have to do more contact paper / tissue paper suncatcher projects since they are so easy and turn out so pretty. (I save ALL tissue paper from presents and packages that enter our house, so I have lots of every color at my disposal.)

Punkin painted egg outline prints using an egg shaped cookie cutter. She wanted to keep making more, but I stopped her after two pages since it was getting close to nap time.

Then, I let her free paint with the leftover paint.

OTHER EGG RELATED ACTIVITIES

I made Punkin an "egg carton meal" instead of a muffin tin meal this week. She loved it, of course, and it was easy and fun. The stuff that went IN the eggs had no theme really, it was just fun to eat food out of her beloved plastic eggs. (She had Cheez It crackers, blueberries, baby carrots, cheese, a hard boiled egg, and M&Ms.)

She played with plastic eggs in her sink of bubbles.

We did an egg on a spoon "race" this week that was a hit. (I got the idea from A Mommy Montage.) I put her plastic eggs in a bowl and she had to scoop one up with her spoon and carry it carefully across the room to dump in her basket. (It wasn't really a "race" but we called it that.)

Then, after awhile, she decided it would just be faster to carry the whole bowl of eggs to the basket and transfer them with her spoon sitting down. Okay, whatever works, I guess! :)

Of course we had to have some fun hiding Easter eggs. One day during her nap I put a small snack in each of her eggs and hid them around the living room. When she woke up, she got to go hunting for them which she always loves doing.

But then when she was done and I told her there was a snack in each one that she could have, she said, "Dis is da best day eber!" :)

During her playdough time this week, I just set out her basket of eggs with the playdough. She ended up using them as "cookie cutters" to cut out circle cookies and put them in her tray to "bake." She also asked me to make a nest for her to put them in, and she made some eggs of her own out of playdough for the nest. And of course, it didn't take long to figure out how fun it was to stuff playdough into the eggs, too.

I tried to teach Punkin how to play hopscotch this week using her eggs. I would toss one or two of her eggs into the hopscotch boxes and try to teach her how to "hop like a bunny" to the squares to get them. She didn't quite get the concept, but she had fun pretending to be a bunny. Later in the day, she got out her pom poms on her own and started throwing them into the boxes as well.

And what's an E is for Egg unit without dying Easter eggs? We did this at Grandma's house the day that we visited this week. They turned out so pretty!

MISC. FUN

There were a couple really nice days this week, so despite the fact that the allergy index was at its highest (and Punkin suffers greatly from seasonal allergies), we just HAD to take advantage of the warm weather by going to the park.....

....and having a picnic!

Punkin still loves to help me make cookies, too. Probably because she can "sneetch" chocolate chips and gets to lick the beaters!

The day we visited Grandma and Grandpa this week was also very nice weather, so Punkin enjoyed some time outside blowing bubbles with Grandpa.....

.....and going on wagon rides!

Next week, we will probably do a combination of finishing up some egg activities and doing some J is for Jesus activities as well as we discuss what Easter is actually REALLY about. But then again, Daddy is home all week on Spring Break, so we may just spend time enjoying having him home and not do too much Tot School per se. We'll see. In the meantime, you can see what other tots were up to this week during Tot School by visiting 1+1+1=1.