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!

Letter E (part two)

About ten years ago I attended a training by Janet Chambers, a teacher-author who shared wonderful ideas about teaching literacy.  One of her ideas that really stuck with me was that of a "big event" to introduce each letter of the alphabet.  Ever since, we've had an alphabet worth of big events here at school each year. (See her book, Ready, Set, READ here.)

For the letter E, I've put together a small Easter basket of plastic eggs, each with something that begins with the letter e: envelope, Elmo, toy eggs, elephants - and some that are empty.  The kiddos LOVE it!

 I also took two groups of children to the zoo, to see the elephants (and of course, other animals.)

 

 I have to admit, I was surprised that the children had an idea in mind for the letter E, and were quite insistent that we do their activity: an Easter egg hunt.  I certainly didn't mind, I had that in mind myself, but I think it says something about the relevance of the activity, that the children who reviewed E with egg hunts last April remember it, and wanted to revisit it.  Not for candy, our eggs were empty every time except for our Good Friday egg hunt.  They loved the hiding and the seeking.  Needless to say, I dug out 6 dozen eggs, some baskets, buckets from the sandbox, and we had at it! 

 The kiddos hid the eggs (usually in a big clump, in "their" spot, so they could find them again quickly.)

 We lined up, and....

 Go!

 We hid and found the eggs over and over!

.

Next week, letter F!

Letter E activities (part one)

I'd start by saying it's been another busy week here at school, but really, when is it not?  There are always so many fun things we want to do,  and the backyard always beckons us too, so it is always busy.  Children are very busy people, constantly doing and learning!  

As we do each week, we made our hand print alphabet crafts: eagles and elephants this week.

 Getting paint on our hands is a fun sensory experience, and adding the details to the dried prints works out our fine motor skills, and results in a project that our moms and dads will treasure.  Sounds like a winner to me!

 We played Elefun, a game that's been around for a very long time, and is still cool!  The children love being able to turn it on and off, to catch or pick up the butterflies, and to put them back in so they can play it over again.  They practiced taking turns and working together, and look at their faces - pure joy!  Several times they broke into spontaneous jumping and clapping and giggling, which is a lovely thing to watch!

 We identified and matched shapes and colors with a scrambled eggs game too.

 On this particular day we had read Humpty Dumpty, and the kiddos got to work together to make a giant Humpty Dumpty puzzle. 

 It wouldn't be Humpty Dumpty day without an egg on a wall!  This idea came from Mrs. Kelly's Kindergarten, and the children LOVE it!

 Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall.  We knew he was going to have a great fall!  I put down different surfaces for him to fall on, and the children predicted whether Humpty would break on each one.  Felt?  He cracked!

 Pee-ew, he smells like a hard boiled egg!  (Some children thought that smelled good, but it was much more fun to pretend it was stinky!)

 Humpty also took turns falling on cotton balls, and paper towels.  Do you wonder if he broke?  You'll have to hard boil and egg and try it yourself!  I will tell you that falling all the way to the floor was not a good plan for Humpty!  The children wanted us to drop him again and again, they really liked seeing - and hearing - him hit the ground!

 So what on earth can we do to follow that up?  :-)  We're making scrambled eggs for lunch, of course!

Exciting E

 It is still 3 full weeks until Easter, but  I can't think of anything better to review the letter E.  First of all, it is meaningful to the children.  Between "Easter" and "eggs" we have both the long and short vowel sounds.  There are many, many terrific books about it, and of course, any number of fun Easter things to play and learn with. 

I read the children Seven Eggs, by Meredith Hooper, to get us started.  In the story, one egg opens each day for a week, so as we read we predicted which day would be next, and what might hatch out of each egg.  The eggs all looked different, so the children thought different animals would hatch from each one, and they were right.  The hatchlings included reptiles and birds, but the children also predicted frogs, (okay, and hippos) so I was pleased to see they remembered many different kinds of animals that lay eggs.

After we read, I pulled out my bag of empty Easter eggs, and some treats to stuff them with.  Each year, the children's parents send in just the treats, and the children stuff the plastic eggs I've collected over many years.  I've included some of the things we put in the eggs this year, to show some of the non-candy options: necklaces, rings, jewels, bubbles, plastic animals, hair doodads, stamps... other possibilities include stickers, coins, tiny toy cars.  Please please, keep in mind the ages of the children you are catering to, and supervise closely for children that mouth small parts.

To stuff the eggs with a class full of kiddos, we sit in a circle, and I roll one or two empty eggs to each child, and then the treat(s) to put in the egg.  The children open their eggs, stuff them, and close them up again, then hold it straight up in the air for the other teacher to collect.  When they're ready for another egg, they hold their hands out in front of them, to show me they'd like another.  We train the children to do it this way so they understand that we don't want a dozen children yelling at us for help, for more, for ... well, really, for anything!  Each day from now until Easter, or until the eggs are all filled, we'll stuff a few eggs.  The children LOVE doing this, seeing the treats, and helping to prepare for our big Easter egg hunt.  Unfortunately I didn't take any photos of this in action - I was very busy handing out treats and eggs!

Some of my young artists wanted to draw and decorate eggs to follow up, so I offered a variety of stencils with ovals, hearts and star shapes to help them make their shapes.  We had a lot of egg pictures today, and the stencils will stay available in the art center for as long as the children are interested in them.

When we went outside, we took 50 empty plastic eggs and a bunch of baskets and containers with us.  The children all hid the eggs in the backyard, then came back together, counted down from ten to zero, and... ran!

They hid the eggs over and over and over again!  This game will also go on for weeks, they never get tired of it.  This will give us a lot of opportunities to think about how we can be fair to each other as we hunt eggs, to practice getting some, but not being too greedy, and to see that our youngest friends move a little slower than the biggest kiddos, and to understand why I'll let them start the real hunt before their older friends.

 Eventually the crazed rush of our first attempts calms down, and this becomes a much more peaceful less crazy experience.  The real egg hunt will still be super fun - that's when there will be surprises in our eggs - but instead of a having just a brief frenzy of egg snatching and strong emotions on a single day, this practice allows the children to satisfy their desire to do it over and again.  Isn't that what every child wants?

Happy Spring!

E is for elephants and eggs

E is definitely for elephant!  We are very lucky to be close to the Fort Worth Zoo, where there are hundreds of amazing animals.  Every year we buy season passes to the zoo, so we can go as often as we want.  Here's one of our favorite photo spots...

 

 It isn't every time we go that we get to see elephants taking a bath, but this week we did!

 Best of all, this summer the Fort Worth Zoo welcomed 2 baby elephants to their herd - and we got to watch them playing.  Bowie was trumpeting and racing around, while Bluebell stayed close to her mother.

 

Another fun activity I like to do this week is smashing eggshells.  I saw this idea on www.babble.com last year, and my kiddos love it!  We had eggs for lunch one day, and I saved and washed the shells.  A box, a mallet, and safety glasses rounded out the materials needed.  This is a free, fun, sensory activity that children (and adults!) enjoy!

 I saved all the crushed shells in a zippered baggie, added food coloring and just enough rubbing alcohol to disperse the coloring, and made dyed egg shells.  Once they were dry, the children wrote large letter Es in pencil, and then wrote over them in glue before adding the crushed shells.  This was another sensory activity for the children, as well as a letter review and glue practice.  We got some bang for our buck out of our scrambled eggs!

 I found an awesome Humpty Dumpty activity on skellyskindergarten.blogspot.com. A hard boiled Humpty Dumpty sat on the wall, then fell on various surfaces.  The children first predicted (a fancy science word for guessed) whether Humpty would break when he fell on each surface. 

 Humpty Dumpty did not break when he fell on the cotton balls!  He still looks so happy.

 All the children agreed that he was sure to break when he fell all the way to the floor, with no protective surface.  We did a count down from 10, and let him go on 0...

 Oh! Smashed!

 Here's the recording sheet I created to go with the activity. 

 We also enjoyed playing with plastic Easter eggs and finding the letters hidden inside.  We sorted the letters into Ee and Not Ee.

One of our friends is having a birthday, so she and two friends made birthday cake with me.  This was her first time to crack an egg, so I held her hands and helped her.  Next time she'll know how to do it all by herself!

Finally, we finished off the week with a cute Elmo craft that I found at TheCleverFeather.blogspot.com.  While I usually prefer art projects to crafts, this one offered so much that I had to use it.  The children got to tear the red paper into small pieces, an excellent fine motor activity to strengthen little fingers, and to prepare them for future writing activities.  They used scissors to cut out circles, a half circle and an oval - both another fine motor skill and a review of shapes, and then they had to squeeze the glue out of the bottle (more strengthening those hand muscles) to stick on all the parts.  Who could resist Elmo?!