As you spend time at home around the Easter holiday, go ahead and break out those plastic Easter eggs a little early! They aren’t just for hiding candy! Did you know that just breaking apart and pushing together plastic Easter eggs promotes fine motor strength and coordination in your little one? Keep reading to discover 10 fun activities you can do at home using your plastic eater eggs, all the while working on important skills for your child! Let us know how you like them!
Build the Egg
This activity is great for improving your childs visual perception skills and following directions! On a piece of paper, use marker or crayon to color a “mismatched” egg (you can also have your child do this step). Next, have your child recreate it using plastic Easter egg halves.
Match Upper case and Lower Case Letters
This activity targets letter recognition and FM strengthening! Using a sharpie, write the uppercase letter on the top half of an egg and the lower case letter on the bottom half. Keep the halves separated and mix up in a bowl or plastic tub. Have your child match the letters together! To make it a little harder, use different color halves for the same letter.
Counting Objects
This activity works on fine motor coordination and strengthening, as well as number recognition and counting skills! Using a sharpie, write numbers on your Easter eggs. Have your child count out the appropriate number of small objects (buttons pictured, but can use pompoms, small erasers or even balled up pieces of paper) and place in each egg! To make it harder, have them use tongs to pick up the small objects.
Color Match
This activity focuses on color recognition, fine motor strengthening and coordination. Using small colored objects, have your child match the object to the correct colored egg, and then close the egg! Let them use tongs to pick up the objects and place in the eggs. Is your child struggling to get their egg back together? This is a hard step for young ones. Line it up for them and then have them “push” it until is clicks together!
Get MOVING
Write different gross motor activities on slips of paper and place in eggs. Hide the eggs in your yard or house and let your child hunt for them! When they find one, have them do the movement back to you! Some ideas are bunny hops, crab crawls, bear crawls, stomping and walking backwards! Choose movements that your child can do safely depending on their age!
Egg painting
Squirt some washable paint on your child’s paper. Have them dip half an egg into the paint, and press onto the paper like a stamp to make a picture! To make it harder, have them use their “stamp” to make letters. If they get some paint on their hands, that’s OK! This can be a great sensory activity, as well as working on fine motor coordination. This activity is limitless!
Egg Towers
See how high your child can stack their egg halves! This activity is harder than it looks. In addition to working on coordination and pressure grading, this activity can promote healthy emotional regulation as your child deals with the disappointment of their tower falling over. Be sure to stay positive and encourage them to keep trying!
Egg Bath
Does your child like to get their hand dirty or do they avoid anything sticky and slimy? Either way, this is a great activity to promote tactile play and participation in ADLs! Have one bowl with shaving cream and another with water! Let them explore and play with the eggs in the shaving cream, then have them “wash the eggs” in the water. Let them use a toothbrush to scrub their eggs, especially if they don’t like brushing their teeth! Using a toothbrush during play time can help them get comfortable with it!
Sensory Bin Play
Options for sensory bins are limitless! Rice, beans, dirt, water…you name it! Plastic eggs are a great addition to any sensory bin as you can use them to scoop, pour and dig. Get creative with your sensory bin and let your child explore! This is fun do do in the yard if you want to avoid a mess.
Cookie Cutter
Does your child enjoy helping out in the kitchen? Whip up a batch of your favorite cookies together, pull some premade dough out of the refrigerator or use play dough, and have your child roll it out. Then let them use their Easter eggs to cut out the dough! This activity targets fine motor strengthening and sensory exploration!
