Wait! Wait! Don't pack up those Easter eggs yet! We've got plans for a game involving everyone's favorite plastic egg for easy, inexpensive, color learning fun!
THINGS YOU'LL NEED:
Pack of plastic Easter eggs
(about one per kid...get them on sale now if you don't have enough)
Paper to match the color of your eggs
(pick em' out for free in the paint section of Lowe's or Home Depot)
Large bowls or laundry baskets
Timer (optional)
First, lay out your bowls and tape colored paper to the bottom of each. Divide in half. Set Mommy's bowls on one side of the room, and your toddler's bowls on the other. Say, Mommy gets green and pink, while your toddler gets blue and yellow. Dump out the eggs and explain the rules of the game:
(1) Match the eggs to the right color bowl.
(2) Whoever collects three eggs of the right color first, WINS!
This game is a great review of simple counting, as well as color drilling. The first few run-throughs will be trial-and-error. Heck, maybe ALL of them will be. After all the eggs are collected, help your toddler sort through her eggs and reshuffle any eggs that got put in the wrong color bowl. I'm not kidding when I say my boy and I did this, over and over, for AN HOUR. Seriously. What game can hold a toddler's attention for that long? The kind that lets him run around and throw eggs, that's what. The great thing about the materials we're using is that plastic Easter eggs pop open if tossed too hard, so very little damage ever happens in the whole, exciting process.
TIPS/SUGGESTIONS:
For older children, increase the number of eggs that need to be collected. Also, set a timer and perhaps sit out completely, pitting kid against timer in an epic Easter egg color battle.
For younger children, you can try taking out some complexity at first by simplifying the number of colors they're dealing with. Say, one color for Mommy and one color for the toddler. Makes it a lot easier, because blue/purple and pink/peach look pretty similar sometimes.
...And let's be honest, if the game quickly dissolves into something like this...
That's okay! Because play time is learning time, and it can't get much better than this. :)
-Alyssa
-Original idea developed by yours truly and my little boy. Take it, and run with it! Please don't forget to share comments of any variations you come up with on the Village blog!
3 comments:
Now I know why I procrastinated and never got that bag of empty plastic eggs into the basement yesterday. :)
Blast! Mine are already put away... I'll have to dig them out. Thanks for the idea Alyssa!
It was so much fun! And surprisingly, Micah got a REALLY good grasp on colors from this...much, MUCH better than before. Who would have thought?
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