Matching Letters
I took some plastic eggs and a Sharpie and wrote capital letters on the tops and their matching lower case letter on the bottom half of the egg.
Open them all up and scattered them on a tray.
Have your little one match the upper with the lower case and put the egg together.
Telling Time
I drew a clock with a target time on one half on an egg. Then I wrote the corresponding digital time on another half. To make this a bit trickier I mixed up the colors so that they did not match. You can have them match depending on the degree of difficulty you want to provide.
To play, I set up the clocks on one side and the digital times on the other side.
Make Your Own Word
On the taller side of each egg, write a word-family ending. I used the following: -at, -an, -en, -et, -in, -ing, -op, -ock, -un, and -ump. Then, on the shorter side, write beginning consonants or blends that, together with the word family ending, make words.
To play, have your child read the first word, then twist the egg to make a new, rhyming word.
To complete our dozen, and to add a little variety, I also made two number-word eggs (1-7, 8-15). Play similarly, matching up the correct number with it’s number word.
Playing Memory
Show your little one all the objects in the eggs and then place the tops on them. Then ask your child, “Where is the pig?”. To make it easier just do one row at a time.
Emotional eggs
Use a marker to draw different faces on your eggs then separate your eggs. Either tell a short story or talk about an emotion and have your little one try to make the correct face (ie. “When Charlie went to the store with his mom she got a balloon. How do you think Charlie felt?”). For older children you can have them draw the faces on the eggs themselves.
Matching Symbols
You’ll want 10 to 20 eggs for this depending on how high you want to go. On one half of the egg write the numeral 1 on the other half of the egg put one dot. Continue to do this for each number you’d like to represent. Then take all the eggs apart and throw them in a bag or box and have the kids sort them back out putting the matching halves together! MIX IT UP: don’t use the same color top and bottom to the egg.
Rewards
Write your little ones rewards on small slips of paper and place inside eggs. When they’ve earn a reward, let them pick an egg to discover what their hidden surprise is.
I’d love to know if you have any unusual uses for usual items like plastic eggs. If you do, please share in the comment section below!