Plastic Eggs, Anyone?

I love Sue Patrick's Workbox System.  These ideas came from her April 10, 2011 e-newsletter.

Some ideas for using those plastic eggs:


Plastic eggs are inexpensive, plentiful and kids love them. All reasons to find great ways to use them with the Workbox System!

I always say I can think of 1001 activities for these eggs.


For little ones, just opening them and putting them together works on fine motor skills and sequencing. For children of all ages, they can be used for enrichment activities in all subjects. Here are few ideas:

Chores: Have a set color for each child (ex: Joey is always blue, Mark is always green). The children hunt for an egg in each room. When they find it and open it, it has a chore to be done in it for that room.

Preschool Workboxes: Put many different color eggs with parts separated in a Workbox. The child finds the matching halves and puts them together in a "finished" egg carton. Expand this by having them place the color word in the egg once they match it. In the beginning the color word will also be printed in that color of ink (the yellow egg color will be printed in yellow ink). Expand by having only black ink color words.

Elementary Age Workboxes: Fill each egg with different items (penny, toothpick, rice, rubber band, etc). Label the bottom of each depression of an egg carton with that item and the child shakes each egg trying to tell from the sound what item is in the egg. He sorts them by sound onto the appropriate label. He then gets to open them to see if he was right.

Middle School Workboxes/Center: Timeline events--label each egg with an event or date. The child sorts them in order if listed by event or if the date is written on them, place the matching event on a label in the depression of a an egg carton. He sorts the eggs onto the correct even. You can also play a game of throwing the eggs to them and when they catch it and look at the information, they have a certain period of time to tell you everything they know about that event. Ex: The egg has "underground railroad" on it. You throw it to them and they have one minute to tell you when, where and why for the underground railroad. This is particularly fun with multiple children.

High School Workboxes/Center: Use them as a visuals when working on planning for big projects or literature assignments. Many people ask me if I have the high schoolers fill their own workboxes or plan their own day/week. I don't. I feel academics are too important to leave up to them at this age. To work on their organizational skills, I use large projects. Also, I find that so many materials that parents may think are "too young" are often some of the best motivators. Your high schooler is not too young for this fun organizational tool: When trying to break down large literature assignments like Moby Dick or The Grapes of Wrath, write main characters on the eggs and then write questions regarding setting, historical significance, events, character assessments, or research ideas and so on to put inside the eggs. Each day they read the book, they progress through a character egg and a question or research egg. By the time they finish the book and the eggs, they have all they need to write a lengthy review or book report on the book without it seeming overwhelming. There are multiple ways for high schoolers to apply this to preparing a research papers, science fair projects and more. It can be a fun spring change as we are trying to push for the end of the year.