Mystery Egg - Easter Clue Solving FUN!

I saw a giant egg at Target and couldn't resist. I knew I had to have it but wasn't sure what I needed it for!  I saw some equally amazing giant eggs at Kroger if you're looking for one. After some thought, I landed on this idea for a little whole-class fun! 

SUPER easy, all you need to do is hide a whole group activity inside a large Easter egg (or an Easter basket if you can't find an egg).  Some ideas of what you can hide would be sidewalk chalk, paints, bubbles, gum, lollipops... whatever you think might be fun for your class!

Then, you will provide four clues for what is inside the egg!  Reveal each clue one at a time. After each clue, discuss predictions as a class. Talk about how your predictions changed as clues were added based on the new information.  For this freebie, I have provided clues for three different objects: sidewalk chalk, paints, and bubbles! If you'd like to hide something else in the egg, all you will need to do is come up with four clues that build upon each other. 

After the final clue, send students to their desks to draw and label their predictions of what is in the egg.

Then, the reveal! Open up the egg to reveal the Easter surprise! Talk about how it fit each of the clues given. Send the kids back to their seats to finish their recording sheets. Then, of course, the BEST PART! Whatever you've hidden in the egg, you can now enjoy together!

This activity works just as beautifully with a cute little Easter basket! 

And that's it! Be sure to grab this freebie to try with your kiddos! You can click here or click the image below to download. 

Have you grabbed this Easter Literacy Freebie yet?  It has a cute little emergent reader, a beginning blends sort, and a CVC "bunny belly spelling" station. 

And don't forget to check out these spring thematic units! 

Plants and Weather!

It's almost Spring - though we are expecting our first big snowfall of the season this weekend... Yikes! Regardless, I love Spring and the fun topics that come with the season. Here's a peek into some of the activities we use to teach about plants and weather. Be sure to grab the freebie at the end of each section! 

 After reading some books and watching some videos on plants, we create this brace map for what plants need, what they have, and what they are. 

We learn about the parts of a plant and do some labeling. 

We also learn about the life cycle of a plant before we prepare to grow our own! 

Through the course of our plant unit, the kids will get to sprout their own lima beans and grow marigolds (either one as a class in a clay pot or individually in small cups!) Before we plant our marigolds, we will get our hands into a soil exploration. 

We also do some learning about plant needs to prepare them for caring for their plants. I love these little flipbooks with a sentence starter!

Then we'll learn about the steps for growing a flower with this chart. We also do some how-to writing on this topic. 

In addition to growing their own flowers, the kids will each sprout their own lima beans in a plastic bag. We make these cute little garden templates to frame the plastic bags and so kids can easily identify their seeds. 

And they make observations in a little journal as their seed begins to grow.

And of course a unit wouldn't be complete without some fun station activities that review math and literacy skills. 

Grab these two game boards for FREE to practice addition and subtraction fact fluency within 5! 

All of these activities are available in my Plant Unit on TPT! Click the image below to get a better look!

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We learn a LOT in our weather unit.  We learn about the different kinds of weather, the seasons, what meteorologists do, and the clouds! 

We make this cute little poem/craft with cotton balls as we learn about the different kinds of clouds.

 Then students get to observe the clouds and record their observations in their cloud journals.

We read the book "It Looked Like Spilt Milk" and then draw our own clouds with white crayon on blue construction paper. These make a great class book or hallway display!

And of course we HAVE to read Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs!! We learn a little poem about food falling from the sky and write about what foods we would and would not want to rain down!

We also learn about temperature and how we can use the weather predictions to prepare ourselves (what we should wear, pack with us, plan for activities, etc.). We love to get out thermometers and measure different temperatures (inside/outside/in water). 

We observe the weather every day for a week and write our observations in our journals.  In March in Indiana, the weather can vary a lot from day to day! 

And we do lots of fun activities during our stations time! 

You can grab these two color by code sheets for free! There is one for addition within 10 and one for subtraction within 10! Click here to grab them or click the images! 

 And of course, all of these activities are available in my Weather Unit on TPT!

Happy almost Spring!!!