{Plastic} Easter Egg Fun!

Plastic Easter Eggs are an Easter staple in our house.  I have fond memories of hiding and hunting the plastic eggs with my best childhood friend.  Even though the eggs had nothing in them at the time, we would spend hours hunting!  So, what else can these cheap plastic eggs be used for besides egg hunts?  Here are a few ideas for helping little one learn:

~ Alphabet Eggs: Program the top of an egg with a lowercase letter and the bottom of the egg with an uppercase letter.  Break them apart and have your child match the lettered eggs!

~Musical Instruments:  Fill with beans, bells, rice or pasta.  Tape shut.  Use a shakers when singing to help keep the beat.

~Name building: Gather enough eggs to spell out your child's name.  With perm. marker write  each letter of your child's name on each egg.  Mix up.  Have your child put the letter of thier name back together.

~Color Matching: Break apart eggs of different colors.  Children match up the correct colors.

~Sound Match: Gather an even number of eggs.  Fill two eggs with one material, such as beans.  Fill two other eggs with a different material, such as cotton balls.  Continue until the desired amount of eggs are created.  To play, children shake each egg and by sound try to match the eggs.

~Begins with...: collect 26 eggs, program each one with an alphabet letter.  Challenge your child to find an object that fits inside of the egg that starts with that letter.  This may need to be done over a period of time.  Or, only fill certain letters.

~Sorting/Graphing: Dump out a bag of eggs. Sort into piles by color.  Graph how many of each color of egg was found in the bag.

~Sizes: Use different sizes of eggs as a fun nesting activity.  Help your child fit smaller eggs inside larger eggs.

~Prediction eggs: Fill several eggs with fun treats, such as a sticker, gold coin, necklace or tattoo (whatever you would like to put in).  For each egg give your child 3 clues.  Such as, it is sticky, it has a bunny on it and you put it on your shirt.  Have your child predict, based on the clues, what is in the egg.

~Playdough circles: open an egg, use half of the egg to make perfect playdough circles.  Create for pretend 'cookies' :)

~Rolling Dice:  Does your child have trouble shaking a dice and rolling it?  Place the dice inside the egg, shake and open.

~Baby Game:  Dump and Pour--  Give your child 3 eggs and a Gerber's Puff container.  Show baby how to fill the container and dump it.  To make the game more challenging add the lid to Puff's container for baby to take off and put on as well.

How do you use Easter eggs for learning??  I would love to hear it!