Easter Egg Lunch

Boy, did my kids love this! Easy and fun (isn't that such a great combination?!?!)

You'll need: plastic easter eggs (I used large and small), an egg carton (optional), and lunch/snack items.

Fill and enjoy!!! There was giggling, suprised laughter, and a whole lot of happy faces at our house.

Easter Pre-K Pack

Over the Big Moon has this great Preschool pack of activities, ready to print! It's 31 pages of puzzles, cutting, matching, sorting, and more! Did I mention it's free??!?!?!

http://www.overthebigmoon.com/easter-prek-pack/

Easter Round-Up 2012

Here are the Easter ideas we shared with you last year!

Color Matching--Easter Style

A great activity for teaching colors while using those Easter Eggs and cartons.













Counting With Eggs

Using Easter Eggs to do some counting activities!














Easter Basket Sensory Activity

Sensory activities are always a hit. Easter grass is a great texture you don't often find other times of year.






Easter Cupcakes

Turn cupcakes into an Easter treat!











Dye Eggs

Let's not forget the grand tradition of egg-dying at Easter!

Dye Eggs

I know most people will have dying Easter eggs in their heads as possible activities around Easter time, but I wanted to make sure it was on everyone's radar.

There are lots of kits to dye eggs you can buy at the store. There are kits with glitter, stickers, even outfits! (see below) You can also do some home-made dyes. The first thing you want to do is either blow out eggs or hard-boil eggs. You want to do the boiling with plenty of time before you dye so they can cool completely. 

This is a fun time to talk about colors--all things colors. Tint, shades, color mixing, etc. Have lots of fun!

Two year old Brayden happy after dying eggs

Easter Cupcakes

Here is a simple, fun treat to make with your children at Easter. If you let your children help with the whole process, you will work on math skills, cooking skills, colors, and fine motor skills.

Supplies

• Cupcakes (either make from box or mix your own)
• Cupcake paper cups
• White frosting (buy made or make your own)
• Optional: coconut
• Green food coloring
• Candy eggs (robin eggs, jelly beans, etc.)
• Optional: licorice for a basket handle

Method

1. Make the cupcakes. Be sure to let your children help add ingredients and mix the batter. Also, be sure to talk about the math involved on your child's level, whether on simple counting (one egg, two cups of flour, etc.), addition (we need three eggs. I have one, how many more do we need?), subtraction (we need three eggs, I added two, now how many more do we need?), or fractions (focus on the 1/4 cup of oil and such). 
2. Bake cupcakes and let cool completely. You might want to bake one day and then decorate the next, or bake in the morning and decorate after dinner.
3. After making the cupcakes, make your frosting. If you are making your own, you can add the math benefits here, too. You can also point out the changes that come to your frosting as you add liquids and as you add solids (it is thick, let's add some more milk. Ooohhh, look what happens! OR It is runny, we better add some more powdered sugar).
   
   Once the frosting is made, it is time to add your green food coloring and see what happens.
4. OPTIONAL: You can dye coconut green to give more of a grass texture (or dye it other colors if you want to). My children don't like coconut, so we didn't do this.
5. Next, you decorate your cupcakes! Let your children use a butter knife to spread the frosting on their cupcake. Then let them decorate with coconut and eggs. This creates a cupcake that looks like eggs in grass. You can also add a licorice stick from one side to the other to be a handle and you suddenly have an Easter basket with eggs instead! I plan do this version this year (photos are from last year), so I will post pics as I get them.

Easter Round-Up

Here are the Easter ideas we shared with you last year!

Color Matching--Easter Style

A great activity for teaching colors while using those Easter Eggs and cartons.



















Counting With Eggs

Using Easter Eggs to do some counting activities!

















Easter Basket Sensory Activity

Sensory activities are always a hit. Easter grass is a great texture you don't often find other times of year.

Color Matching--Easter Style

Age Range: 1-4 years old

Materials:

• plastic easter eggs
• cardboard egg carton
• crayons/markers

Prep:

color insides of the egg spaces in the carton to match as close as possible the colors of the plastic eggs you have

Activity:
Show your child how to put the yellow egg in the yellow hole. Practice with a few eggs and then step back for your child to do it themselves. If your child struggles simply say "no, not there, where does that yellow egg go?" and praise him when he puts the egg in the correct hole.

*For us this was surprisingly a big hit. I just knew my son needed practice with colors but he really latched onto this game. He completed it 3 separate times later in the day too!

Easter Basket Sensory Activity

This activity was born out of my need for several things. First of all, I wanted a fun sensory activity for my children for this season of the year. My kids love sensory activities--especially my nearly three year old daughter. Second of all, I had a need to justify the use of another Easter basket. I don't know what it is about these things, but I have a weakness. I love them. My husband wanted me to downsize our collection (I guess since I cam home with two new baskets a couple of weeks ago), so I found myself analyzing the need for each basket.

This is a nice sensory activity for this time of year because, as you can see, the basket can double as a decoration.

AGE RANGE

18 months and up

SUPPLIES

• Easter Basket
• Easter grass
• Treasures to put inside. I put bunnies and eggs. For added excitement, you can put things in the eggs

PREP

• Fill your eggs with treasures if you intend to
• Put your treasures in the basket buried under the grass

ACTIVITY

Allow your child to dig through the grass to find the treasures. You child will want to do this over and over again. It is as simple as that.

Counting With Eggs

This is a fun activity to do in conjunction with Easter to focus on math learning. One skill teachers look for when screening for kindergarten is the ability to touch and count objects, and this activity helps teach that.

AGE RANGE
You can do this anywhere from two and up. Some children sometime between 18 months and up could do this. You could also do a variation of this with children younger than 18 months to expose the child to counting.

SUPPLIES

• Egg carton
• Plastic Eggs* Note: You can do this activity without eggs if you want to
• Marker
• Items to fill eggs

PREP

• Write a number on each egg. The photo above shows a pound sign (#) before the number. That isn't necessary, and I think just the number would be best. Write the numbers 1 through 12. *If you are doing this activity without the eggs, just write a number in each egg spot directly on the carton.
• Fill the eggs with something. You can use snacks such as raisins, candy, or small toys if you have some that will fit 12 in one egg. Put as many items in each egg as the number on the egg. So if you were doing raisins, you would put one raisin in egg one, seven in egg 7, etc.

ACTIVITY

For Preschooler
Have your preschooler identify what number is on the outside of the egg. Have your preschooler open each egg and count the items inside. Have him take each item out as he counts it so he will get practice touching and counting items. Many preschoolers can count from 1-12, so it might be more of a challenge to do the numbers out of order.

For Toddler
Work in number order 1-12. Before you open the egg, have your toddler identify the number on the egg. Most won't know; tell you child what the number is if she doesn't know. Then open the egg. The next step will range based on toddler's ability. Younger toddlers will most likly need you to pull the item, count it, and hand it to her. The benefit of this is she will hear counting, feel the counting, see the counting, and if it is a treat/snack, taste the counting :). The older toddler might be able to pull the items out herself and count, and some might pull out, but need some help counting. Complete the activity at your toddler's ability level with offering some challenge to help her grow.

For Baby
As soon as baby is old enough to eat finger foods, you can put your favorite finger food in the eggs. Work in number order 1-12. Show baby the egg. Point to the number and say what it is. Then open the egg. Count each item as you take it out. Give it to baby as you count and let her eat it. You aren't going to have your baby start counting one day as a baby, but this will expose her to counting. Don't underestimate the power of simple exposure. Children are eager to learn and learn from all they experience.

If you are eager to do something with a baby who is unable to eat finger foods yet, you can still do something. You can put items in the eggs, pull them out, and count them. Keep these items out of reach of baby because they will be too small to be safe for her.