Yesterday I found a stash of plastic Easter eggs that I purchased for 75% off last year. I thought instead of waiting for the Easter egg hunt on Easter morning, why not create some literacy activities to play throughout the next month.
As I usually do, I like to build on the interests of my kids. Right now that happens to be a love of hatching baby birds in nests for my 3 year-old. Every night he builds a nest with blankets and pillows to sleep. He then announces how many baby birds are sleeping with him for the night. At times, it’s been as high as a million!
He’s also been showing a lot of interest in learning letter sounds. So, we created this beginning sounds Easter eggs game to merge the plastic eggs I had on hand, my son’s love of birds and nests, and a literacy skill he is ready to practice. This is what we came up with to play.
Hatching Easter Eggs Game
Preparing to Play
Supplies: 1 dozen plastic Easter eggs, 12 small pieces of paper, 12 stickers or magazine cut-outs (4 pictures for each sound you will be sorting for), 4 nests (we used plastic bowls) each labeled with the letter representing the sound for that sort
When choosing sounds, select sounds that are very different for beginners. Good sets to begin with include /b/,/m/,/k/ and /f/ or /t/,/s/,/a/ and /g/. Children who are more advanced can sort by sounds that require more discrimination such as /b/,/d/,/t/,/f/.
Set-up: Place a sticker on each piece of paper. Stuff one paper in each egg. Place all Easter eggs in a central location. Arrange the four nests in a row with the letter of the nest facing the child.
Playing the Game
The child “cracks” open an egg and removes the paper from inside. Have the child say the name of the picture and identify the beginning sound. Place the paper in the correct nest.
The game can be repeated several times using the same sorts or creating new sort categories. You could also reverse the game. It would be fun to have the kids find pictures or stickers of words based on the beginning sound. Then, they could have someone else play and then check their work. This would really help to solidify the learning!
Extending Letter Sound Learning
If you are interested in another activity to work on letter sounds, check out a short video I created called “If You Know the Letter Sound”. It’s a fun song to sing to practice letter/sound correspondence and just one of the many ways we play with magnetic alphabet letters.
So pull out those Easter eggs and starting putting them to use right now! And, have a fun sing-along afterwards!
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Victoria says
We have been working on beginning sounds and word families, so this is the perfect activity for us to try out this month! Thank you for stopping by the Thoughtful Spot Weekly Blog Hop to share with our readers! You were featured as one of my favorites this week 🙂
Ashley says
Looks like a great learning game! I bet they would like hunting for the eggs too!
Jill says
I love this idea! How creative and clever!
Thank you for stopping by the Thoughtful Spot Weekly Blog Hop this week. We hope to see you drop by our neck of the woods next week!
Michelle @ The MaMade Diaries says
I love this idea! I’ll definitely have to do this with my little guy, it would be a great way to play and work on his speech! Thanks for sharing at the Playful Learning Linky! I hope you’re having a great weekend 🙂
Gude @HodgePodgeCraft says
This is such a clever idea! And how cute that he loves to snuggle up in a ‘nest’ at night 🙂
Thanks for sharing at #Pintorials
Karen bell says
What a lovely fun learning idea. I might try it with my girls 🙂 Have pinned
#Pintorials
Dianna @ The Kennedy Adventures says
Jodie,
This is a GREAT idea – I love it! My boys struggle a bit with beginning sounds — we’re going to work on it a lot over the summer.
I pinned this to my Easter resources, as well as Language Arts and Phonics on Pinterest.
Great to see you linking up to The Thoughtful Spot! Hope to see you back soon, sharing more of your great ideas!
Dianna
Jodie Rodriguez says
Thank you so much Dianna! I hope to have lots more beginning sounds activities soon! I love The Thoughtful Spot linky party! I appreciate your kind feedback.
Theres Just One Mommy says
What a fun game to practice those letter sounds!
Pinning to our early literacy board!
Emma @ P is for Preschooler says
What a creative way to use some of those plastic eggs! We’re working on letter sounds too so I may give this one a try! 🙂
Jodie Rodriguez says
Enjoy Emma! We had a lot of fun with it.
Emma says
Thanks Jodie, inspiring. Will play the hatching easter egg game tonight with my 3 year old daughter. She is going to love it.