Are you drowning in plastic eggs? Before you put them away, check out these 20 activities with plastic eggs your kids will love – and ask to do again.
Thank you, LEGO® for sending us the DUPLO® used in this post and for inspiring us to play. The opinions stated in this post are 100% mine.
It’s a beautiful April morning. All of our school-age kids have been dropped off at their respective educational facilities. Jonah and I are enjoying a quiet day together. Our agenda is wide open, our social calendar completely blank. In other words, we are free to do whatever we want!
I am done stuffing plastic eggs for Jansen’s preschool Easter egg hunt later this week. Small bags of fairly healthy snacks were shoved into 48 brightly colored plastic eggs. Jonah sits RIGHT next to me, “helping” as much as a toddler helps getting any task completed.
As we put the snacks into the eggs, we talk about the colors of the plastic eggs, we count the pile of finished eggs and Jonah sorts them by color. He is so sweet, patient and ready to learn.
It dawns on me, why do we only hide eggs once a year? The game is a great learning opportunity for the little ones; it exercises their mind as well as their bodies.
Benefits of egg hunts:
- Gross motor skills:
- Running to get the eggs.
- Bending over to pick them up.
- Placing them in the bucket.
- Fine motor skills:
- Cracking open the eggs.
- Pulling out the “treasure” and putting the egg back together again.
- Fill the eggs with DUPLO® bricks to increase the fine motor skill benefits.
- Color recognition:
- Sorting the eggs by color
- Picking up one particular color and leaving the others alone
- Saying the colors out loud as they pick them up.
- Counting:
- Counting the eggs.
- Picking up a particular number of eggs and leaving the others.
Putting LEGO DUPLO® bricks in the plastic eggs adds more challenges and benefits to the egg hunt. (DUPLO® bricks fit PERFECTLY in the larger plastic eggs, by the way!)
We quickly finish our project of stuffing Easter eggs and I then manage distract Jonah with another activity. While he’s preoccupied, I decide to surprise him with his own impromptu Easter egg hunt.
LEGO DUPLO® recently sent us their Family Pets DUPLO® set perfect for toddler play Easter egg hunting. The set has the cutest animals – so perfect for an Easter egg hunt – any day of the year! I quickly stuff each of the eggs with DUPLO® bricks and the DUPLO® animals from the set. (I may also have used some of our “old” DUPLO® bricks to fill the remaining eggs, but don’t tell Jonah!)
[bctt tweet=”#Activities for kids who love to learn and get creative. Plastic eggs to the rescue. #ToddlerFun” username=”MamaintheNow”]
Jonah is busy playing “Batman and Robin” with his plastic figurines, as I sneak out into the back yard and “hide” the plastic eggs and eggs made out of DUPLO® bricks.
I call Jonah to come out into the backyard and the look on his face is priceless. Honestly, I will set up an egg hunt for him every single day just to see that look on his face again.
He immediately goes to work and is smiling from ear to ear as he cracks open the eggs. Apparently, I left a few eggs empty (by mistake – I promise it was a mistake) – but Jonah is so caught up in the excitement of the game that he doesn’t even care that the eggs are empty when he opens them! He shrugs his shoulders, mumbles “oh no, it’s empty” and then moves on to the next egg.
Check out these pictures to see for yourself. The cuteness and enthusiasm is unmistakeable.
To answer your nagging question, yes… we have a LEGO-themed Easter egg hunt, as you might expect. This post details how we do it and it mentions a number of fun ways to add a LEGO aspect to any egg hunt.
However, this year we will also be adding DUPLOR bricks to our eggs and I can’t wait to see Jonah’s face!
Before you put your Easter decorations away for the year:
Don’t miss these fun activities with plastic eggs:
- These toddler-approved activities from Busy Toddler will put your plastic eggs to good use. She shares over ten fun activities, specifically geared towards toddlers.
- Add a little paint and plastic eggs and you have yourself a work of art, check out this great painting activity from Fun with Mama.
- Prepare for next year’s Easter decorations by making a beautiful wreath using plastic eggs. The Soccer Mom blog got creative here and the results are adorable.
- This plastic egg inspired Easter Bingo game from Sunny Day Family is great any time of the year.
- Color matching and Stacking activities from Sunny Day Family will keep those little toddler hands busy for a long time.
- Every activity is a bit more fun when you add googly eyes and funny faces, like Craftulate did with their Easter Egg Monster Craft.
- This Easter Egg Matching Game from Craftulate is a wonderful fine motor skill activity, and the best part is that you already have all the supplies at home, ready to have fun!
Instead of cleaning up the plastic eggs after Easter, I will leave them out for us to play with for the next several weeks/ months, as we expand upon the learning opportunities developed through the hunt of the almighty plastic egg.
The Most Awesome LEGO Easter Egg Hunt Ideas
