Egg-citement and Egg-speriments

In case you hadn't guessed, in celebration of the fun side of Easter, today is "Egg Day" in our house.

We began by learning the word "egg." Hannah practiced writing the word and drew a picture of Easter eggs, and Ben just colored a picture. We also talked about ovals, because eggs are shaped like ovals. Then, we did a series of "egg-speriments," using chicken eggs from the fridge.

First, the kids looked at the different sizes, held the eggs, rolled them to see how they wobbled. and tapped gently on their hard shells. Then, we talked about the things baby birds need as they grow and where those things are inside the egg. We cracked an egg open and examined the yolk and the air sac inside the shell. We also looked closely at the little pores in the egg shell. (Since the kids seemed rather distraught at the thought of wasting an egg, we all ate eggs for lunch, using the eggs we studied...)

When we finished, the kids made an adorable chicken craft using different shapes, including ovals. Ben made the yellow chick (found here), and Hannah made the hen (found here). All of this will lead into Easter egg dyeing tonight when Daddy comes home.

Additionally, and perhaps most importantly, I also plan on tying this lesson into the idea of new life (because of Jesus) at Easter. Once we finish coloring eggs this evening, we will make Easter Story Cookies. In these cookies, eggs symbolize new life. We have been reading and re-reading the Easter story for the past two weeks, and these cookies help show the story in a very visual way. I cannot wait to see their faces when the cookies are empty, just like Jesus tomb, tomorrow morning...

How refreshing for me, as well, to see Easter anew - through the innocent eyes of my children!

Stormy March

Today we began a two week unit focused around spring and Easter. Somehow, I ended up with a copy of a wonderful, out of print children's book called "The Story of Easter for Children" by Beverly Rae Wiersum. It begins by describing spring and the coming of new life, and then it ties spring and all of the Easter symbols into a beautiful description of how Christians celebrate the resurrection of Jesus and his gift of new life. So, we are going to use the book as a starting point to discuss the coming of spring, Easter eggs and new life, and, most importantly, Jesus' death and resurrection. If we have time, we'll also look at some of the other Easter symbols.

Because of our rainy, stormy weather today, I decided to focus today's lessons around rain and the water cycle. I found some wonderful ideas at http://first-school.ws/activities/science/drippy.htm, including links to a story about "Drippy the raindrop" and several good coloring pages at Kidzone.

We started by reading the Easter story, and then talking about spring rains washing the snow away. Then, we looked at the story of Drippy and discussed the water cycle. Hannah learned the word "rain," and practiced writing it several times. She also drew a picture of rain on the paper.

To illustrate the concept of the water cycle, we used one of the suggested activities at First School, soaking cotton-ball clouds with water and watching them "rain" into a bowl. The kids loved doing it again and again!

Then, I continued the illustration using the wonderful Kidzone worksheets. I boiled water in a teapot to show the four stages: evaporation, condensation (on the lid), precipitation and collection (water dripping from the lid and falling back into the teapot). Then, the kids colored the corresponding worksheet pages. They seemed so excited, and even Ben understood at a two-year-old level. He kept telling me over and over that water is "old" because it keeps going up and down, instead of being newly created water.


Hannah was very proud of her finished work. Her fine motor skills (writing and coloring) are improving every day!