Ivan is well versed at watching YouTube on the iPad. Recently he has discovered quite a lot of videos of people opening plastic eggs to find random things inside. It's amazing how he will watch them and interesting to hear him learning his colors in doing so!
Now that Easter is approaching, I was able to find those plastic eggs at the store. We have had a lot of fun playing with them in all sorts of creative ways - and I'm surprised to report they keep him busy for twice as long as I would have guessed!
BEANS IN THE KITCHEN - Ivan has a cupboard with a plastic mixing bowl and dry mix of beans (kidney, black and white beans). We have been playing with those for the past 6+ months, pouring them into different sized containers, spooning them into muffin and mini-cupcake tins etc. Add the plastic egg's and we've kicked the bean game up a notch! I fill the eggs with a bean mixture and place them in the mini-muffin bake tray. Ivan then opens the egg and dumps the beans into the mixing bowl. This is a great game to play for counting and learning colors!
WATER IN THE BATHTUB - On the first evening of the eggs + beans the egg's had to go into the tubby for Ivan to go into the tubby! Fill with water, open & dump. Sounds pretty straight forward but you can search for colors and opening the eggs is a lot more fun than it sounds!!
PLAY-DOUGH WRAPPED EGGS - YouTube inspired, we brought the eggs into a play-dough session at Grammy's on a snowy Saturday morning! I couldn't wrap them fast enough ... he LOVED opening them and getting the play-dough ball out from the inside. Aside from keeping him entertained, this was yet another way to reinforce his colors - although I think he's got them down! ... Perhaps I need to find some pastel eggs to elaborate on his color palettes!
Playing with play-dough wrapped plastic eggs at Grammy's house
PASTA SHAPES IN HIS PLAY KITCHEN - I think I may have exhausted the egg play ... I got different shaped dry pasta and filled the eggs in his play kitchen. I think part of the thrill here was dry pasta in his pots and pans! He counted to 8 all by himself, clear as day! That was worth the pasta on the floor!
Ivan playing with dry pasta & plastic eggs in his play kitchen. Great for learning numbers & colors!