Easter Activities

I was able to find a ton of ideas for Easter shelf activities! The first morning that all the new Easter theme activities were on the shelf, the girls were so excited!

The sensory bin caught their attention, first. Inside the sensory bin: grass, eggs, rubber ducks, stretchy bunnies, shovel and scoop. They spent hours playing with these items (and, yes...I'm still finding grass).

I also included two baskets with several eggs in each. We hid and found numerous eggs throughout the week! Mac mastered opening the plastic eggs.

For fine motor skills, Izzie enjoyed matching the large Styrofoam eggs (Dollar Tree) to their correct color. I simply used markers to color on the circular Styrofoam (Dollor Tree).

In addition, I brought back out an activity that she completed last year...transferring eggs from a basket to a plate, using tongs. She didn't use the tongs in last year's picture. I found a cute pair of small bunny tongs at Michael's that she used and was successful in transferring the eggs. She enjoyed this activity the most, unfortunately, I didn't get any pictures!

Both girls enjoyed placing the hanging eggs (Dollar Tree) on the tree (Dollar Tree). Izzie is really excited about patterns, lately, and has been organizing everything into patterns...she really had fun creating patterns with the eggs on the tree.

I adapted an activity that Izzie did last year. Instead of matching up numbers, I made it a little more complicated. I kept the top portion of the egg as a number, then add the correct amount of stickers to the bottom portion of the egg. To keep from getting too frustrated, the eggs were only numbered 1-10. This was probably Izzie's least favorite shelf activity for the week...I think it was too time consuming and since the eggs are circular, some of the stickers went all the way around the egg, which made Izzie loose count and have to start over, again and again.

The musical eggs were also included on the shelf. Mac really enjoys just shaking the eggs and making music with them!

Another activity that Izzie completed last year was this matching shapes game. I really love having activities/games already created that I can bring back out! Even being a year older, she still really enjoyed matching the eggs to the correct shapes!

We traveled for a long Easter weekend to visit my in-laws. The girls had a blast playing and entertaining Grandma and Grandad. We took the girls to an Easter egg hunt, where 10,000 eggs were hidden...and it was super crowded, too crowded. Thankfully, it was sectioned off into age groups, but it was still way too crowed. The girls also had a great time coloring eggs with Grandma.

The girls received this adorable bunny Popsicle holder from their Great Aunt. I was super excited to put it to use! And, as you can tell...the girls were super excited too!

Okay...so, this post layout looks really weird! I tried a new layout...trying to use less space with more pictures and when I previewed the post, it looked like everything was where is was suppose to be. But, now that it's uploaded, everything is out of whack! I'm way too lazy to go back and rewrite this post...back to the old layout, next time!

Tot School

Izzie is 42 months old and Mac is 13 months old.

Our main themes for this week was Noah's Ark and Rainbows.

Each morning, we read Noah's story from the Bible and Izzie retold the story using her story cards and felt board pieces that she created. For more details, see original post.

She spent time completing several Letter U activities (U is for umbrella, Izzie loves using an umbrella when it's raining, so it kinda fit into our theme for the week).

For our stART project, Izzie read Duckie's Rainbow and completed a few rainbow activities.

New shelf activities included:

Creating a rainbow using pipe cleaners and styrofoam (I've seen this activity on numerous blogs). Izzie really enjoyed it and it was great for fine motor skills.

Leap Frog Dominoes game...matching up colors.

Just for fun...

Drawing family members on her easel. She informed me that the big circle in the middle of the body is the belly button!

Washing dishes, or possibly washing her clothes...that she's wearing!

She helped make Rice Krispies bunny treats for our playdate.

We spent one morning at a group playdate, where the hostess had planned a ton of great activities!

Izzie colored her Easter eggs, all by herself....as she kept reminding me. She did not want any help from me; she is becoming so independent.

Izzie hopped around with her bunny ears on that she made. She also made a bunny cupcake and another bunny craft.

We had a hoppin' good time!

Tiny Tot School

Mac concentrating on her rainbow stacker...you can tell by her tongue!

Playing with her rainbow stacking bowls.

I walked in the living room and found Mac reading a library book! We keep the weekly library books in the basket beside their little couch. The girls love to snuggle and read books together!

Coloring with Izzie in their super new coloring book. Mac is starting to mimic everything that Izzie does!

She learned how to climb on and off her Rocking Horse.

She really enjoys helping me do the laundry, putting in and taking out the clothes. Here she's taking a break for a quick game of Peek-a-Boo!

For more Tot School, please visit 1+1+1=1.

Musical Eggs

I made these musical eggs at Easter, but decided to bring them back out to play with during our Farm Theme week. There are a total of 12 eggs or 6 matching pairs. The object of the game is to pair up the matching sound eggs. Izzie is doing very well matching up the eggs by the different sounds.

Mac is having a blast with the musical eggs too!

Plastic Egg Activities

Izzie has really enjoyed playing with the plastic eggs this year. I made her 12 egg sound shakers to play with. I filled each egg with an object (pennies, rice, plastic rings, etc.). She has had a lot of fun just shaking the eggs and listening to the different sounds. After I made this activity, I discovered another way to make and use the egg shakers...fill two eggs with the same object, then try to match up the two sounds. We'll have to try this!

Another plastic egg activity she did...transferring the plastic eggs from the basket to the plate by using salad tongs. Izzie had a difficult time with this activity; the tongs made it harder. I think her hands are too small for the large tongs. I would love to find a smaller pair of tongs and repeat this activity to see if she would do better. To help, I gave her a spoon to use to transfer the eggs...this made it much easier and more enjoyable for her.

Egg-tra Color Fun

To reinforce colors, I filled each plastic egg with some corresponding pompoms (yellow egg--yellow pompoms), then had Izzie open each egg and place the pompoms in the correct color container.

Egg-tra Number Fun

During our "Egg-tra" day, we also worked on matching numbers 1-10. I wrote an individual number on the top portion of the egg, as well as the bottom portion of the egg. Izzie had to match the numbers to put the egg back together. This was a great activity to work on her fine motor skills.

Egg-tra Shape Fun

This was a very simple activity to reinforce shapes with Izzie. She had to match each egg with it's correct shape. I found the adorable bunny at Target. I made two sets of shapes; attached one set to the bunny and the second set to the plastic eggs.