Celebrate Eggs
Activity: Egg Hunt
Watching birds build nests, lay eggs, and care for their young is fascinating for tots and adults alike. Take some time to watch the birds. Are they collecting grass and twigs for building nests? Are they singing strongly looking for a mate? Can you find a robin with a muddy breast? She is using her chest to shape her nest of mud and grasses. Laying eggs is the next activity she will concentrate on. Can you find her nest? Bird nests are not always high in trees. Robin nests can be found in dense bushes about 4 feet off the ground. Take a walk and see if you can find any bird eggs. Once you have looked for the real thing, let your child search for plastic eggs that you have hidden ahead of time. When your tot has found some eggs, encourage her to find a really great hiding spot so a friend can take part in the egg hunt too!
Activity: Egg Race
Instead of racing to a finish line with an egg on a spoon, try using a large plastic cooking spoon to move plastic eggs from one bowl to another bowl. No need to hurry! Your tot may wish to use her hands instead of the spoon. This is great gross motor practice as well.
Activity: Egg Toss
Do you remember the egg toss that missed and dripped yellow yolk on your shoes? It may not be a game that you want to participate in with your tot, but tossing large plastic eggs instead of the real thing can be a lot of fun. Try rolling them back and forth as well.
Activity: Who Hatches?
Discover what is inside eggs. Fill plastic eggs with animals that hatch from eggs. Examples: birds, frogs, dinosaurs, snakes, turtles, salamanders, or insects.
Activity: Look Who’s Hatching
Add a lid to a large box. Tell your tot that the box is a large egg. Ask your tot to pretend to be a baby bird, frog, turtle or dinosaur and crack out of your egg.
Activity: Eggs in a Nest
Draw a tree branch with nest onto a piece of cardboard. Cut a hole above the nest just bigger than a plastic egg. Ask your tot to put the plastic eggs in the nest. If your plastic eggs are different colors, name them as you place them back in the nest.
Activity: Egg Pickup
Cut out several tissue paper eggs about 3 inches long. Place the eggs in a shallow pan. Show your tot how to put a straw in her mouth, take a deep breath, and inhale. How many eggs can you pick up with the end of your straw? What happens when you blow?
Activity: Tissue Eggs
Cut egg shapes out of construction paper or waxed paper. Tear pieces from tissue paper or streamers. “Color” the egg with a glue sick. Add the tissue paper to the egg. Hang it up for a springtime decoration. If you used waxed paper, hang it on a window for a colorful sun-catcher.
Activity: Color Matching
Use plastic eggs or color some hard-boiled eggs for this activity. Then take an egg carton and color the inside (where eggs sit) with various colors (color each egg carton “cup” a different color to match the eggs that you have). Have your child match the colors on the inside of the egg carton with the eggs. Sit the egg in the cup of its matching color.
Activity: Egg Maracas
Fill plastic eggs with rice, nuts, small pebbles, or other small, hard item. Tape eggs shut and give to our child. Play some lively music…have fun dancing and shaking your egg maracas! (You could also make this into a fill and dump activity, but use care since some children like to put things into their mouths.)
Activity: Decorating Eggs
Provide a variety of scouring pads, pastel paint, and white paper. Let your tot discover things to do with the materials provided.
Activity: Painting with Eggs
Place a piece of paper in the bottom of a cake pan. Set aside. In an old pie plate, place a hardboiled egg. Use a large spoon to cover the hardboiled egg with paint. Place the egg in the cake pan. Ask your tot to move the cake pan back and forth. As the egg wobbles back and forth, it will leave a trail of paint. Try different colors of paint.
Activity: Eggshell Art
Chicken eggs come in lots of colors…not just white. Did you know that they can be green or brown too? Rinse out eggshells and let them dry on a paper towel. Color a piece of paper with a glue stick or brush on white glue. Ask your tot to crush the eggshells. Sprinkle them on the glue to create a mosaic. For a variety of of colors, eggshells can be dyed with food coloring and vinegar.
Activity: Nest Builders
Birds make nests from small twigs and dry grasses that lie on the ground. They also use fallen leaves, pine needles, bits of bark, feathers, even animal fur! With your child, try to build your own nest. Roll a piece of play dough or clay into a ball about the size of your palm. Stick your thumb in the center of the clay ball to turn it into a cup or nest shape. Take a hike. As you walk, look for things that you and your child think would make a comfy nest for tiny baby birds. Push the things you find into your clay nest. You can keep adding to your nest until you feel it is ready for a baby bird to live in. Place your nest in your yard. See if a bird comes and decides to use any part of your nest for its own.
Activity: Mosaic Egg
Cut white drawing paper into an egg shape. Brush the surface of the paper with water. Cut out small pieces of colored tissue paper. Cover the egg with tissue paper scraps. These may be torn pieces.
Brush the entire surface with water and let dry. Remove the tissue paper pieces. The colors in the tissue will bleed onto the egg.
Activity: Eggheads
Rinse and save eggshells in an egg carton for a while so that you have several to work with. The best eggshells are those broken straight across, slightly larger than half a shell. To make an egghead, first select a large half shell. Draw on comical facial features with a permanent marking pen. Fill the shell with some soil, sprinkle grass seed in it, and moisten with water. Set several eggheads in the egg carton near a sunny window, and in about a week, they will have a funny head of hair. You can trim the “hair” with scissors and watch it grow back again! When you are finished enjoying your smiling creations, plant the entire egghead in your garden; the shell will provide minerals for the soil as it decays.
Activity: Egg Puppets
Use a permanent marker to draw a variety of faces (happy, sad, angry, surprised, silly, etc.) on plastic eggs. Now, be creative! You can make a boat out of a Styrofoam egg carton, put out a basin of water and pretend that your egg family is going on a cruise. Or make little beds and egg carton chairs for your egg people. Name them. Make hats to distinguish between them.
Sing them a silly song (to the tune of I’m a Little Teapot):
I’m a little egghead, short and fat
Here is my shell, don’t give me a pat
If you don’t use care when I’m about, then
Crack! My insides will fall out!
Activity: Humpty Dumpty Nursery Rhyme
Humpty dumpty sat on a wall
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall
All the kings’ horses and all the king’s men
Couldn’t put humpty together again
Will You Read To Me?
Take time to enjoy a story.
Chickens Aren’t the Only Ones by Ruth Heller
An Egg is Quiet by Dianna Hutts Aston
Guess What’s Growing Inside This Egg by Mia Posada
Activity: Sensory Seed Box
Fill a large container with a grain, like flax or rice. Use cups, containers, and spoons, to fill and dump just like you would a sandbox. Can you feel around and find the hidden items? Hide animals that hatch from eggs like plastic fish, birds, salamanders, lizards, frogs, turtles, snakes and dinosaurs in plastic eggs. Bury the eggs in the grain.
Snacks at Home
Bird Nests
- 1 bag peanut butter chips (10 oz)
- 1 5 oz can chow mein noodles
- 1 T shortening (Crisco)
- Kix cereal for eggs
Melt entire bag of chips and shortening slowly in microwave or double boiler on stove top. If using microwave, heat full power at intervals of 30 seconds or less until chips melt. You want the chips and shortening to be well blended, creamy and hot. Immediately pour the can of chow mien noodles into the peanut butter mixture and toss lightly to coat noodles. Do this quickly, making sure the noodles are evenly coated. Drop by spoonful’s onto wax paper and gently form in to the shape of a nest, leaving a hollowed area in the center. You may need to reform your nests slightly as they cool. Place three Kix in the nest as the eggs. Each batch makes approximately 14 nests.
Egg Surprise
Hike snack inside plastic eggs…goldfish crackers!
Activities provided by:
E Resources Group
2550 Stagecoach Road
Webster City, Iowa 50595-7375
Toddling on the Wild Side was supported by REAP-CEP
_ 0-1
✓ 1-2
✓ 2-3
_ 3-4
_ 4-5
_ 5-6
Category: Adult-Child
Iowa Early Learning Standards:
1.2, 1.3, 2.1, 2.2, 2.3, 2.4, 3.3, 4.2, 5.1, 5.2, 5.4, 6.1, 6.2, 6.3, 7.3
Related Kindernature Resources:
