Let's Make Learning 'EGG'-citing!

Spring is (nearly) here so grab those plastic eggs and...

Today I am here with 10 ways to use plastic eggs for ELA, Math and Science!

I always do an Oviparous Animals unit in my kindergarten classroom each spring.

Because I am a 'theme nerd' and have a need (sickness maybe?!) to make everything connect, I have my ELA and Math centers include eggs, as well!

Here are 10 simple, relatively no-(major) prep ways to incorporate plastic eggs into your centers!

They range in grade level from PreK-2 depending on how you offer support and/or enrichment!

You can also have a recording sheet that has 'Real' and 'Nonsense' listed on top.  As students twist and read a new word, they can record if it is a 'real' or 'nonsense' word!

Focus on just one vowel, a combination of a few students are having trouble with or a mix of all 5!

Don't have enough magnetic letters?

Click here to download this FREE editable pack!

You can type in sight words, CVC words, vowel pairs, vocabulary words, spelling words, digraphs, blends, letters, etc!  Print, cut, stuff!  

Your center is all set!

Use it both ways for differentiation!

Target words your students are working with, or need more practice reading and writing!

Type, cut, stuff and you are ready to get crackin'!

So easy to set up!

Want to make it more appropriate for upper elementary?

Put 2 'blue' and 2 'green'

Students make the blue number from both dice (either add the two numbers, use it as 'tens and ones' or multiply) and do the same for the green.

(Ex. roll a 6 and 2 for blue.  It could be 8, 26 or 62, or 12)

They compare the numbers they created to find the greater/less than number!

I made 0-5 dice so that the greatest sum would be 10 for my kinders.

To support students, place counters or manipulatives for them to use to assist their computations.

To make it more appropriate for upper elementary students place 10, 20 or 30 sided dice in the egg for students to add/subtract!

Decomposing is a difficult skill for many kinders to understand, but I found using the double sided counters really helped them!

You can read more about how I had my kinders use eggs and counters on THIS POST.

(You can even find free recording sheets to download!)

Recruit parents and fellow teachers to save egg cartons for you (and maybe even donate some plastic eggs since this activity requires quite a few)!

The idea of making an egg carton into a 'ten frame' came from a post back in January 2014 by Laura at Differentiation Station Creations!  

And it works PERFECT for this activity of using eggs to make groups of 10!

You can read all about how I used it in my kindergarten class, and download the free spinner and recording sheets on THIS POST!

You can make the eggs match on the same color (top/bottom) or mix the egg colors for a bit of a challenge!

This is just a few ways of using the eggs with numbers!

There are so many other ways to practice numbers with eggs!

So now we are back to the oviparous animals unit!

I use the eggs to introduce the unit to my kinders!

Each child cracks open an egg (I do have some duplicate animals in eggs because I simply ran out!) to learn about what animals are oviparous!

I use different size eggs (the tiny ones to the extra large) to show how eggs can be different sizes.

I highly recommend reading Chickens Aren't The Only Ones by Ruth Heller if you plan on conducting an oviparous animals unit with your students!

You can find some easy non-fiction readers for your oviparous animals unit here:

and a supplement pack of activities here:

I also have several lifecycle crowns that are a great way for students to display what they learned about oviparous animals!

and there is also a butterfly lifecycle freebie available for download:

I hope you and your students have an 'egg'-citing time learning math, words, letters and more using plastic eggs!

Do you teach your students about oviparous animals?

Are you a 'theme snob' too- and feel the need for everything to coordinate?

I'd love to hear from you!

Until next post,