Today was an EGGciting day filled with math and science. The weather was beautiful so there was also a lot of time spent outside in our backyard.

The Estimation Jar- A wonderful suggestion from my daughter’s teacher and something I used to do when I taught kindergarten. Put a select number of the same item in a jar and have your child estimate how many items are inside. My daughter wrote her estimation on a chart, opened up the jar and counted the items and then recorded the answer. She was only one off! This is a great activity to build on estimation, counting and number writing and we are making the estimation jar part of our daily routine.

Chickens Aren’t the Only Ones– One of my favorite science books for young children is Chickens Aren’t the Only Ones by Ruth Keller. The book introduces readers to the wide variety of oviparous (egg laying) animals in the world. We watched an episode of Reading Rainbow on YouTube that highlighted the book. CLICK HERE to watch. We also read the book The Egg, a Scholastic Discovery Book. Oviparous or NOT Oviparous Game– I created a game out of a worksheet and plastic eggs. I used this Oviparous Animal Sort I found for free and cut out the animals, putting a circle around the oviparous animals to make them look like they were inside an egg. Then I took plastic eggs and wrote a different animal on each egg, placing the corresponding animal inside. Some eggs contained an oviparous and some were mammals. My daughter took an egg from the basket and had to tell if it was oviparous or a mammal and then she opened up the egg to check her answer. The whale was the only animal that tricked her. She thought it was oviparous but a whale is a mammal and has its babies born alive and well. Egg Shake, What Is the Sound- I filled plastic eggs with various things I found around the house (rice, macaroni, pennies flour, jelly beans, goldfish crackers, cotton balls) and my daughter shook each egg, making a guess as to what was inside. I made a chart that showed the possibilities. After she made her predications she opened up the eggs to check them. Egg Patterning– Another EGGcellent suggestion for her teacher was egg patterning. I traced Easter egg shapes on index cards and colored the tops and bottoms to match eggs I had on hand.  Separate the eggs and match them to the mixed up egg drawings. After my daughter completed my mixed up eggs, I gave her some blank egg patterns on index cards and she created patterns for me to solve.Jesus Time– Our early childhood director put together some valuable Holy Week resources. We watched a video about Jesus washing his disciples feet. CLICK HERE to view. Then we sang along to “What a Mighty God We Serve!’ CLICK HERE to view the song. We also used our Holy Week retelling cards to review the events that led up to Easter morning.

Good Night Moon– Before bed we viewed and talked about the full “Pink Moon” in the sky tonight.While it did not actually appear pink, it was the closest, biggest and brightest Full Moon of the year! A reading of Good Night Moon  by Margaret Wise Brown. “Good night stars, good night air, good night noises everywhere.”