Empowering Parents to Teach- Letter E hiding

Alphabet Eggs

 

 The Bunnies’ Alphabet Eggs by Lisa Bassett inspired us to make our own alphabet eggs just like the little bunnies in the story.

 

Empowering Parents to Teach- The Bunnies' Alphabet Eggs

 

In the story, the Easter Bunny’s eggs are ruined the day before Easter.  Mr. Rabbit was watering his garden and did not realize the water was soaking through the ground and spilling into the Easter Bunny’s burrow.  Noticing all the color has washed off of the eggs, the Easter Bunny begins to worry that he does not have time to make new eggs in time for the morning.  Mr. Rabbit suggested that his ten children could help him make more.

 

While the Easter Bunny really wanted beautifully crafted eggs, the kids had another idea.  They painted letters on the eggs.  With very little time left, the Easter Bunny let the children paint as they pleased.  In the morning he was still nervous that the children would be disappointed with the eggs since they would be expecting finely decorated ones.  Instead, the children were very happy to find the letter eggs and they started spelling words with the eggs too!

 

Inspired by this, we decided to make some letter eggs to hide too!  I made alphabet eggs simply using glitter glue on hard boiled eggs.

 

Glitter glue

Glitter glue

 

Squeezing that glue bottle took a lot of hand and finger strength!  It made me realize that making the letters on the eggs are a wonderful fine motor skill for kids that can make the eggs themselves.  To help, you can write the letter on the egg for them with a marker and they can trace over the letter with the glue.

 

Letter A egg

Letter A egg

 

Time to hide the eggs and find them!

 

Empowering Parents to Teach- Letter E hiding

 

There are so many ways to use the eggs:

  • Find all the eggs and put them in alphabetical order
  • Spell words with the letter eggs
  • Sort them into vowels and consonants once they are found
  • Group them together into words and hide them as a word unit
  • Instead of writing letters on the eggs, write sight words!
  • If you write words on them- create sentences or phrases
  • Try some hands on math when you’re done- add, subtract, compare quantities, etc
  • Have your child trace the glue letter with his or her finger.

 

The possibilities are endless.  Like the Easter Bunny in the story- follow the children’s lead!  Their ideas may surprise you!

 

Following my boys’ lead, they wanted to smash the eggs when they were done. They smashed half of them and left the other half to do experiments- my 3 year old loves making up his own experiments.

 

Empowering Parents to Teach- Egg smashing

 

Empowering Parents to Teach- Smashed Eggs

 

Smashing the eggs, squishing them, and peeling them is a great fine motor activity and sensory experience!  They even started hitting the eggs like baseballs with the carton as a bat!  You never know where this activity can lead you :)

 

 

 

Linked to:
Montessori Monday

4 Essentials for Letter Recognition (Part 2)

Looking to help your little one recognize the letters of the alphabet? Adding four essential toys to your playroom may help you! In fact, it may be things you already have.

These two items are hands on materials that allow the child to actually hold each letter and play with them individually. By including all four materials (from Part 1 and Part 2) in your environment you are giving your child the opportunity to see, hear, and touch the letters in many ways!

 

Recognizing the letters of the Alphabet:

 Alphabet Puzzle

 Empowering Parents to Teach: ABC Puzzle

  • Puzzles in general are great for spacial skills. As the child completes the puzzle, they will recognize the correct orientation for each letter. As you work with your child, name each letter as they place it.
  • Build spacial/ math vocabulary as they work by using words such as “rotate”, “flip”, “turn” when they are having trouble fitting a piece into the space.

Soft Foam Letters

Empowering Parents to Teach: Foam letters

  • Hide and seek game: I had these letter around for my youngest to play with, just hold and get familiar with the letter shapes. But, my oldest became very interested in playing with the letters. So I made up a game. I took five or six of the letters and hid them in the playroom and he searched for them. Once he found them, I took five or six more and hid them. We repeated this until all 26 letters where hidden and found. The younger the child is, the easier they should be to find. For a 2 year old, you aren’t really hiding them, as much as placing them around the room. You can adjust the difficulty for age.

Empowering Parents to Teach: Hide and Seek Letter Game

  • Let them free play with the letters as they would any other toy. The letters can be characters in a play, ramps for cars, or a chair for Barbie! There are endless possibilities.

 

All of these things are inexpensive and easy! Remember it’s more about how to interact with your child than the toy itself! 

 

If you want to purchase these from Amazon, just click on the picture. It will take you right to the site. *These are affiliate links. If you make a purchase from Amazon, I receive a small percentage of the sale at no extra cost to you.

 Good option if you want both upper and lower case letters

All uppercase letters

 Foam letters and Numbers