Excited for Ee: Top 10 e activities

 

E is exciting and extraordinary, just like our little ones, so I've put together some ideas you can enjoy doing together.

There are LOTS of ways explore eggs, so let's start with them.

1. Use egg shells to make the letter E!  

For this activity I saved and cleaned egg shells, and let them dry.  Then I did something extra special - I let my students use REAL grown up tools - safety goggles and a mallet from my garage - and we smashed those shells to bits!

Oh yes, that was exciting! They felt interesting, but a little sharp and gritty, so we didn't play with them for long...

We carefully poured them out of the box we had smashed them in, into a releasable bag, then added a little food coloring and rubbing alcohol to dye them colors (exact amounts don't matter, just add enough rubbing alcohol to disperse the coloring, then pour them out onto newspaper or an old box to dry).  Later in the day we wrote the letter E on a paper using a LOT of glue, then sprinkled on the egg shells. When it was dry we gently shook off the extra pieces of shell, and had a lovely eggy letter E!

2. Beginning sound sort.

Put tiny toys inside plastic Easter eggs, making sure some have things that begin with E, and some don't.  I was able to include these things: toy elephant, eagle, Elmo, erasers, and a couple were even empty - an unexpected E word!  The children pulled the eggs out of a basket, opened them, and decided if the items started with E or not.  We also repeated this game with 1" letter tiles, and the children sorted the letters into Ee / not Ee.

3.  Make a torn paper Elmo craft.

I don't think I came up with this idea, but one of the challenges of blogging about almost 30 years of teaching, is I no longer know where I found ideas or inspiration, and how much of an activity is my take on something I saw long ago. Until I sat down to write this, I thought I had pinned it from someone else - but when I look for it on my Letter E Pinterest board, it's not there.  

4. Humpty Dumpty's Egg Drop

I DO know where I found this idea! Mrs. Kelly's Kindergarten did this so well, I flat out copied her!  Go ahead and set a couple of eggs to hard boil, and while they're cooking click the link above to check out the details.  You'll be dropping this poor egg off his wall several times!

5.  Field trip to the zoo

Children learn best through experience - it's one thing to tell you an apple is red and round and tastes good, but you don't know apples until you hold one in your hand, take a crunchy bite, and taste it.  It's the same with everything else - your child will learn MORE when they can see, smell, hear, taste and touch things.  Obviously there are plenty of things we can't or shouldn't explore with all our senses, but if you are able to, find ways to let your children experience the world.  

One of our favorites is to visit the zoo.  When I had my preschool I was very fortunate to live near a world class zoo that also offered year long passes at a discount.  Having a pass for the year meant we could go often without paying more, so we did!  One of the harder to recognize benefits of this, is that we never felt compelled to stay all day to "get our money's worth".  Little legs wear out quicker than grown up ones, and if tired kiddos can't stop and nap.... well... that's a whole different experience!

Not everyone has access to a zoo, or the funds for that matter.  Do what you can.  For the letter E, that might mean looking for eagles, visiting someone who has chickens so you can collect the eggs, or stopping to look at an earwig you spot.  It also doesn't have to be this week!  

6.  Easter egg hunt.

Yes, I know, it's currently September, and not even close to Easter.  Yes, I know, not everyone celebrates Easter.  Guess what?  Your children won't mind a bit!  This is us, every September:

I keep empty Easter eggs tucked away, and every year when we learn about the letter E, I get them out.  Here's what I've learned from my students:  It doesn't matter if anything is in the eggs.  The fun of an egg hunt is in the running and searching and gathering and squealing and laughing.  Hiding the eggs is just as much fun as collecting them.  No basket? No problem!  Use an empty plant pot, a bucket from the sandbox, or collect them in your shirt.  

This is a game my students can play over and again for a couple of weeks.  As they do, they're learning: if you want to play the game again, you have to help hide the eggs, it doesn't feel nice to have all the eggs and see your friends feel sad that they have none, it's fun to give a friend hints to help them find some, waiting for the egg hunt to start over is hard but we CAN control ourselves and wait for everyone to be ready, and more! We repeat this whole process again in the spring, in the weeks before our actual Easter egg hunt.

7.  Hand prints - let's get messy!

The elephant hand print is self explanatory:  paint their hand gray and stamp it on paper.  When its dry, they can add details with a black marker.  You can see we added torn tissue paper to suggest grass along the bottom of our page.  I found this idea here.

The link to the original eagle hand print no longer works, but my pin for it does - find it here on my hand print and foot print board.

This one is a little more complex.  As you can see, we printed it on a separate paper, which we glued onto our tissue paper sky.  (Tissue paper doesn't work well to take hand prints.)  This one was completed in 3 steps.  First we made 2 brown hand prints, overlapping slightly on the palms.  Once that was dry, we painted 3 fingers white and pressed those on for the tail feathers.  We also painted the side of our curved pinky fingers, which made the head.  Beak and eyes were added when dry.

8.  Music, of course!  Here's a rhyme about 5 and 5 eggs:

 

9.  The elevator song, from Riverton Branch Library:

and10. 5 Elephants in the Bathtub, by Jbrary:

 

 Bonus activity 11: Initial letter worksheets

 I'm not big on worksheets for preschool, but I know sometimes they're helpful, and some children enjoy them. This week I put together an initial sound alphabet, 26 coloring pages that focus on the first letter sound in words.  If you and your littles are working on initial sounds and they enjoy coloring, please consider supporting my blog by checking out this (and other) resources in my TeachersPayTeachers store.

I hope these ideas keep you and your little ones happily learning this week!  Remember to tag me on Instagram @paulabeckerman2399 or Paula's Primary Classroom on FaceBook if you try any of these ideas.  I LOVE seeing your happy, smiling, engaged children (and once a month I choose someone who has tagged me to win $10 worth of free resources)!

See you Wednesday for a list of books to accompany your letter E learning!