When my children were little they loved carrying the eggs around the house, and I was inspired to put them to use in some fun plastic egg preschool activities.

Plastic Egg Preschool Activities

Springtime is perfect for some colorful hands-on learning activities with those Easter eggs.

Your little one will have lots of fun playing and learning with plastic eggs.

Egg Sorting Activity  

You can easily use the plastic eggs to work on sorting.

Have your child sort the eggs into different colors.

Then, turn it into a race and see who can sort their pile of eggs the fastest!

Making Patterns with Plastic Eggs

Plastic eggs are also fun to use to work  on pattern skills.

Try a simple 2 or 3 color pattern first.  For example:  blue, green, blue, green….

You can even use the eggs with older kids, making the patterns more complex.  For instance:  purple, blue, green, green, purple, blue, green….

Check out this simple plastic egg math activity to take the learning further.

Homemade Egg Shakers

Try making your own homemade shakers with plastic eggs.

Put some dry rice, dry beans, or even dry cereal in an egg.  Now you have a shaker!

Don’t want the little ones opening it up and dumping it/eating the contents?  Use a dab of super glue to hold it closed.  (Our library has shakers like these and my kids love them!)

And if your child loved this — check out our music instrument STEM idea.

Scavenger Hunt

Who doesn’t like a good scavenger hunt?

You can just hide the eggs and have them hunt.  Or, step it up a notch and put a small clue in each egg that will lead them to the next egg.

I hid picture clues in the eggs since my little ones don’t read yet.  Each clue led them to the location of another egg with a clue, until they reached the final egg – filled with left over Easter goodies.

DIY Memory Game

Finally, those plastic eggs can be used in a homemade memory game.

With my 4-year-old I made a memory game where she would match lower and upper case letters together.

The 2 year-old’s game involved matching shapes.

You could also do small toys, numbers, colors….  The options are endless.

If you have eggs that have tops that connect (like I did), I suggest breaking off the little plastic piece that connects them to make it easier to lift the tops off and see what’s inside.

We started with just 6 eggs (3 sets of pairs), but you could make it harder for older children and use more eggs.

These plastic egg preschool activities are fun for toddlers and preschoolers.

You may also like these posts:

• How to Make Plastic Egg Submarines
• 20 Adorable Sheep Crafts
• Preschool Easter Crafts

Originally published April 14, 2012.

The post Plastic Egg Preschool Activities first appeared on There's Just One Mommy.

We finally made it to the end of our vehicle alphabet series, with Z for Zeppelin!

We started off our letter Z activities with this Zeppelin Coloring Page.

They both enjoyed decorating their very own zeppelins, just the way they wanted.  While they colored they had lots of questions about zeppelins!

My vehicle-enthusiast reminded us that zeppelins are a type of dirigible, or lighter than air aircraft.  (Yep, he has actually known what a dirigible was since he was 3, thanks to his LeapFrog LeapReader Book: Let’s Explore Things That Go!)

I explained that zeppelins are made with metal, unlike the more commonly seen blimp.  Of course, then we had to go look at pictures on Mommy’s computer!

After a while we moved on to practice writing the letter Z.

We have been in a shaving cream mood lately.  This time we used it to write zig-zag letter Z’s over and over.

Shaving cream is great for letter and spelling word practice.  You can have the child use their finger tip to write the letter, or use the end of a pencil or a paintbrush like we did!

Finally, we took our zeppelin pictures and flew them around to search for letters!

I taped lower-case letters around the kitchen and living room ahead of time.

Sometimes I have them just hunt for the right letter.

This time around I asked them to hunt for letters based on the sounds they make.

They zoomed off in search of the letter that made the “mmm” sound and tried to find it before the puppy, who was also trying to tear all the letters down.  (Hence, no pics this time around!)

It was a great refresher for both the 5 and 6 year-old, a perfect activity before school starts!

Both my kids have some fun ideas to continue our vehicle alphabet fun.  I’m looking forward to sharing them here with you!

Until then, you may want to check out my vehicle pinterest board, which is full of vehicle crafts, snacks, and more!

The post Letter Z Activities first appeared on There's Just One Mommy.

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away…  

It was time for some letter X activities!

As we near the end of our vehicle alphabet series, we just had to do X-Wing Fighter for the letter X!  (Am I showing my age with this one?)

Neither of my kids have seen any of the Star Wars movies yet, but they have heard about them.  And the boy was super excited to discover we had Daddy’s old Star Wars X-Wing fighter (minus a few pieces).  There is nothing that excites him more than getting his hands on a new vehicle!

To prepare for our letter X fun I printed out 35 stars (I picked one I liked on Google).  I wrote one capital letter on each star, making several the letter X.  I also threw in a few numbers.  Then I used paint-safe tape and taped them on both sides of our hallway.

This was our “galaxy” to fly our X-Wing Fighter through!

The kids took turns flying the spaceship down the hallway, searching for the correct letter as I called them out.

With several X’s they each got to look for the letter of the day; they also had fun searching for many of the other letters and even a few numbers as I called them out.

Once they had both found 5-6 different stars each it was time for our second activity — putting the stars in alphabetical order!

Working as a team they hunted for each letter, lining them up carefully on the wall.

After they were all lined up, I asked my youngest to count them with me.  He was surprised to discover how many letters are in the alphabet!

Since there aren’t very many words that actually start with the letter X, we talked about some words that end in X.

Using Post-it Notes I put up the word “ox.”  After sounding it out together I stuck a “B” in front of it to make the word “box.”

The 6 year-old sounded it out and then we changed the “B” to “F.”  The 5 year-old was thrilled to find he could sound out the word on his own!

We continued this with “ax,” changing it to “tax,” and “Max” and then did a few  “-ix” words (“six,” “fix,” and “mix”).

And of course we HAD to do a craft!

Just click to check out our X-Wing Fighter craft!

Until then,  may the Force be with you!

The post Letter X Activities first appeared on There's Just One Mommy.

“The wheels on the wagon go round and round….”

That’s right… It’s time for the letter W in our vehicle alphabet series!

And when it comes to activities for the letter W, we just had to do W is for Wagon!

With the beautiful weather we had, I planned for all outdoor activities for the letter W, although many of them could be modified and done indoors if needed.

For our first activity I drew an upper and lower-case W with sidewalk chalk.  (You could use painter’s tape if you are doing it indoors.)

Then I asked the kids to use objects they found in nature to form the letters.  They decided to use rocks from our driveway to form the upper-case W and handfuls of clover flowers to form the lower-case W.

Once they were finished they wanted to count the rocks and flowers.  We went slowly so the preschooler could work on his one to one correspondence.  They were surprised by how many more flowers the little W had versus the rocks in the big W!

After writing their own W’s with sidewalk chalk (all over the front porch), it was time for some hop-scotch!

Sometimes kids just have to move!

They had fun jumping with two feet when there were two W’s and one foot when there was just one W.  (The newly 5 year-old just learned how to jump on one foot and he LOVES to show off this skill!)

My next activity for them was also physical.

They took turns pulling each other in a clothes basket.

It was hard work!

Then we got out the little red wagon.  Before I knew it they were zipping each other all over the place.  We talked about why it was easier to pull each other in the wagon (wheels), and what wagons could be used for.

Finally, it was time to fill that wagon up with things that start with the letter W.

I had a basket of objects from the house, some that start with W and some that don’t.

They took turns pulling out each object, saying what it was, and deciding if it belonged in the wagon or not.

Looking for ideas of things you might have around the house that start with W?

We had: a wig, walrus, wand, whistle, washcloth, piece of white chalk, wings, and a piece of wood.

We had a wonderful time with our activities for the letter W.

Can you guess what we will be doing for the letter X?

***

If you liked our letter W activities, you may want to check out some of our other vehicle activities:

• Learning Activities with Cars
• D Is for Digger and Dumper
• F Is for Firetruck
• M Is for Monster Truck

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On the last day of her church school program, the kindergartner came home with a plastic cup of grass.  The students had planted the grass seeds a couple weeks before, monitoring its growth and discussing the promise of new life with the coming of spring.

What I saw when she brought home the long green strands was an opportunity for some fun scissor practice!

I simply popped the plastic cup into an empty (and clean) soup can.  (I have one of these can openers that don’t leave sharp edges.)

For fun I stuck on some magnetic facial features we have.  If you don’t have those on hand, or to really make it even more fun for little ones, you might try hunting through magazines together to find eyes, a nose, and mouth to create your own funny face.

Then I presented it to the preschooler with a pair of scissors and told him to start cutting the critter’s hair.

He had a blast!

In fact, once he finished he asked how long it would be before the hair grew back and he could do it again.

Not only was it fun scissor practice, but it’s also become a bit of a science project, checking the growth each day and trying to guess how long it will take to reach the original length.

What fun ways have you helped little ones practice scissor skills?

The post Grass Head Scissor Practice first appeared on There's Just One Mommy.

We were spending the day at Grandma and Grandpa’s house, and after telling Grandma all about “U” Is for UHaul, the preschooler was itching to do “V” Is for Van.

Since I was able to do all my planned letter V activities without much prep, I grabbed some paper and we got started.

Our first activity was to create a rainbow letter “V.”

The preschooler had fun making a large V on the sheet of white paper.  First he used the red marker; then he grabbed the orange, blue, green…   He had fun tracing the letter over and over and watching it become a rainbow of colors.

Then I suggested we use our bodies to create the letter.

 (Don’t you just love that tile floor?  Let’s hear it for the 70’s!)

We had fun contorting our bodies different ways on the kitchen floor.  Mommy made little guy laugh when I made a few shapes that were most definitely NOT the letter “V.”  He took great care to correct my mistakes.

And, of course, we couldn’t work on the letter “V” without some sort of vehicle!

I drew the rough shape of a van on one of our pieces of paper.

I added 3 squares to it, writing the word “van” with one letter per square.  On another scrap of paper I made several other squares, writing the letters C, M, F, T, and R on them.

First the preschooler carefully colored the van red, giving it blue stripes just for fun.

Then I had him trace each of the letters as we spelled “van.”

Once he was finished, he traced the letters on the other page, carefully saying each letter as he traced it.

Then I asked him to cut out the squares.  (Squeezing in some scissor practice!)

Once our squares were cut out we took turns replacing the letter “v” on our van with each of the other letters, carefully sounding out our new words.

Not only were we practicing sounding out the letters and words, but we also talked about how they all rhymed.  My preschooler is BIG into words that rhyme lately!

With the nice weather lately we will be taking “W” for Wagon outside this week.  Be sure to come back to see what we do!

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