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Letter Matching Eggs

Sweet Pea is 35 months old.

From: I am not sure where I first saw this idea, but This Little Project posted about a letter matching egg game and Crunchy and Green also posted about it, along with some other good ideas for plastic eggs.

Material:

  • 26 Plastic eggs.
  • Permanent marker.
  • 2 Baskets or bowls.
  • Egg carton.

Procedure:

  • On the top half of each egg write an uppercase letter of the alphabet.  Write the corresponding lowercase letter of the alphabet on the bottom half.

  • Separate the egg halves.  Put all of the uppercase letters in one basket and all of the lowercase letters in the other.

  • Sit next to your tot with the egg baskets and carton in front of you.
  • Tell your tot that you are going to be matching upper and lower case letters to put the eggs back together.
  • Pick up an egg half out of the uppercase basket. Say, “This is the upper case letter “B”.  Now we have to find the lower case one.”
  • Start carefully looking through the lowercase basket, talking out loud as you look for the lower case “b”.  “Hmm.. is this it?  No, that is an “i”.  Maybe this one?  Oh here it is!  We found the lower case “b”!”
  • Snap the pieces together and then place the whole egg in the carton.
  • Ask your tot to pick a new letter out of the upper case basket.
  • Help him or her find the matching lower case letter and put that egg together.
  • Repeat with the remaining letters.

Observations: Sweet Pea had a great time playing with these, even though she had her own ideas about how we should use them.

She kept picking up an egg half and then asking me if it was a certain “wrong” letter.  Then she would crack up laughing.   For example, she picked up the egg half that had the letter “k” on it and asked, “Is this a “g”?”  When I said, “No, that’s not a “k”, that’s a “g”, you silly girl!” she would dissolve into giggles.  She was about 60% cute and 40% annoying.  🙂  Although interestingly, I think it was still fairly educational because she went out of her way to make sure she picked the “wrong” letters.

She did not have any interest in doing this work by herself.  I usually like to work with her on an activity a little bit and then turn it over to her to do on her own, but she really wanted my help with every letter.  I don’t know if this activity was maybe just at tad too hard for her or if she was just craving extra attention.  I like the concept of this activity though and we will definitely try it again in a few weeks.

I think this would probably be a good activity for older tots.

Notes from the Trenches: The ink from the Sharpie started rubbing off of these eggs after we played with them for a bit.  Does anyone know of a type of marker that will stay on them?

Rating: 3 Stars * (Fun, Easy, It would probably an independent activity for a lot of older tots, but it wasn’t for us this time.)

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