I know most of us are still at home with our kids as we continue social distancing and “crisis-schooling.” And if your house is anything like mine, you probably have plenty of plastic eggs in a variety of colors littering the floor, counter, and anywhere else they may have landed. What in the world do you do with them now that Easter is over?

Well, one of the things that makes learning so fun in a school classroom is learning centers. These are areas where teachers are able to get creative by taking basic learning concepts and teaching them as a game or activity instead of in worksheet form. When we were homeschooling, I found this was a wonderful way to reinforce concepts we were learning that otherwise felt redundant or boring. Who wants to force their kids to repeat their math facts one more time? But make them into a game and suddenly my kids were begging for more!

So I thought I’d share a few ideas from our homeschooling days of ways you can use those colorful plastic eggs after Easter as part of your “crisis-schooling”- or maybe just to keep the little people in your house busy for awhile. (And if your little people have turned into big people, I have a few ideas for teens, too, so skip to the end!)

Preschool:

• Color Sort: Start with mismatched eggs and have children match each top with its correct bottom and tell you the color.
• Big A, Little a: Use a sharpie to write an upper case letter (A) on the top and a lower case letter (a) on the bottom of an egg. Repeat with different letters. Use mismatched eggs so they are matching the letters, not the colors. Take the eggs apart and let them match away!
• Number Matching: Use a sharpie or stickers to write a number (3) on the bottom of an egg and the appropriate number of dots/marks/etc. (***) on the top of an egg. Mismatched colors are best for this one, too. Take the eggs apart and have them match the numbers with the same number of dots.
• Noise Makers: Now, you may not like me much after this one, but little ones love to shake things and make lots of noise, so this is the perfect combination! Fill eggs with different hard items such as rice, beans, sand, cereal, and rocks, and then glue or tape them shut. Have kids try to guess what’s inside them and/or use them as musical instruments!
• Activity Egg Hunt: (See below; last item in Elementary)

Elementary:

• Easter Egg Math: Write the equation on one half of the egg (4×2=) and the answer on the other (8). Mismatched eggs work best so they are actually doing the math and not just matching colors. This works well with all ages because you can do adding, subtracting, multiplication, division, and even fractions- whatever your child needs to work on!
• Easter Egg Word Families: This is a great game for beginning readers. Google a list of simple rhyming words or word families such as “rat, mat, sat, fat” and “sock, rock, lock, clock.” Then use a sharpie to write the ending sound (“at” or “ock”) on the top half of the egg and the beginning sounds (“r, m, s, f” or “s, r, l, cl”) spaced evenly around the bottom half of the egg, so that when the two halves are connected they form a word. Then show your child how to twist the egg to form different words. 
• Easter Egg Letter Scramble: I wish I had known about this activity when my kids were younger. I found the idea at hangingaroundinprimary.com and it looks so fun! Use Scrabble tiles (or cut out individual letters on squares of paper) to form words, then put all the letters for each word inside an egg. Set a timer and see how quickly your child can unscramble all the words. You can do this with sight words, spelling words, Easter-themed words, etc.
• Easter Egg Compound Words: Write two words that form a compound word on each half of an egg (butter fly, rain bow, race car, base ball, fire works, moon light, sun shine, etc) so they will make one word when put together. Mix up the tops and bottoms, and have children attempt to form the correct words (and laugh at the new words they create).
• Easter Egg Contractions: Write different contractions on individual slips of paper (won’t, can’t, shouldn’t, hasn’t, she’ll, etc) and then write the two combining words on each half of the egg so they line up together. Have kids locate the correct slip of paper and put it in the corresponding egg.
• Activity Egg Hunt: We have done multiple variations of this game and it will keep your littles entertained for days! Write various activities on slips of paper and put them inside the eggs before you hide them. When children find an egg, they open it up and do what it says, then either put the egg in their basket or leave the egg there for others to find (if there’s more than one child hunting eggs). If children are too little to read, they can bring their paper to you or you can put pictures in the eggs instead of words, or even team them up with an older sibling. Activities can range from physical tasks like jumping jacks, sit ups, and shooting baskets, to singing silly songs, telling a joke, or acting like an animal. Check out Aliceandlois.com for a free printable of ideas for younger children. And keep reading for some ideas for the whole family!

Tweens/Teens/Whole Family:

• Work-out Egg Hunt: If you have been eating a few too many cookies the past few weeks like I have, or if your work-out routine (what’s that? Lol!) is getting a little predictable these days, this might be a fun way to shake it up! Fill each egg with a slip of paper containing different circuit training activities, such as 20 sit ups, 50 jumping jacks, 30 squats, 20 lunges, 20 burpees, etc. and hide the eggs around the house or yard. As you find each egg, open it and do the activity. Leave the eggs for someone else to find and either keep count of the eggs or do as many as you can in 15 minutes.
• Photo/Video Egg Hunt: There are lots of ways to be creative with this one, so use your imagination! You can hide the eggs and have your kids take pics of all the eggs they can find in a certain amount of time, or you can fill each egg with a photo or video task, such as “Do a self-timer pic of yourself doing something crazy,” “Make a Tik-Tok (if your kids don’t have tik-tok, they can make a pretend one),” “Do a slow-motion video of yourself doing a trick shot,” or “Video yourself reciting your favorite Bible verse while hanging upside down from the couch.” If your teens are not into social media, try something like “Video yourself shooting 5 baskets in a row,” “Video yourself singing the chorus of a Hamilton song,” or “Make a video reciting the Periodic table” (hey, some kids might find that fun… Mine would rebel!)- fill in the blanks with whatever your kids are interested in. Then look at the photos and videos together afterwards as a family!
• Smartphone Clue Hunt: This is a really cool idea I found over at blog.bitsofeverything.com!  She has printable bar codes you can cut out and scan which will lead your teens on a clue hunt to different places around your yard. If some of the clues don’t fit at your house, no worries- just leave them out! She also has printable clues in case the technology gives you trouble. Hop on over to her website to find everything you need, and read through the comments for some additional ideas (like adding a golden egg with Chick-fil-a gift cards or how to adapt and make your own barcodes to scan)!  

So, that’s just a few ideas to keep your family busy and the eggs off the floor! Feel free to share any other ideas you come up with!