Ten Creative Ways to Use Plastic Eggs in the Classroom
Plastic eggs aren't just for spring—they're durable, reusable, and full of learning potential year-round! Whether looking for hands-on activities for centers, small group lessons, or whole-class fun, these ten ideas will spark student engagement and reinforce key skills. Don't pack away your plastic eggs just yet. Let's crack open some fresh learning ideas!
1. Egg and Spoon STEM Race
Take the classic egg and spoon race a step further! Before racing, students examine different spoons—big, small, deep, flat—and predict which will transport a plastic egg most effectively. Let them test their ideas and record their findings in their STEM journals.
2. Mystery Shakers
Fill
each egg with a different object, such as beans, buttons, rice,
pennies, or cotton balls, and have the students shake the eggs to guess
what is inside! Use a different color egg for each material. Then,
create a color-coded answer key so the students can check their answers.
You can also modify the activity by creating two eggs with identical
contents, while the other eggs contain different items. The students
must find the two eggs that make the same sound. This activity is
excellent for developing auditory discrimination skills.
3. Weight Sequencing
Using materials such as pennies, vary the number of coins in each egg. For example, place one penny in one egg, five pennies in another, and create a heavy egg with twenty pennies. Ensure that the weight differences are noticeable. Students can then arrange the eggs from lightest to heaviest and discuss their reasoning. This is a simple, hands-on way to explore nonstandard measurement.
4. Message in an Egg
Replace fortune cookies with eggs! Fill each egg with a small strip of paper containing a sentence for students to read. These sentences can be rhyming, silly, or even task-based. This activity is perfect for literacy warm-ups combined with an outdoor egg hunt. Get my EGG HUNT SENTENCES with print-and-go sentence strips, which are approximately the same size as a message in a fortune cookie.
5. Egg Matching Challenges
Mark uppercase letters on one half and lowercase on the other—students find and assemble matching pairs. You can expand this idea with several standard objectives. Use them for compound words, scrambled CVC words, addition or subtraction sentences, numerical sequences,and alphabetical order.
6. Egg Size Sorting
Create a mixed pile of mini, standard, and jumbo eggs. Students sort the eggs by size using labeled trays or bins. This simple activity supports visual discrimination, categorization, and size comparison.
7. Letter Sound Object Hunt
Label eggs with uppercase and lowercase letters. Provide students with small objects using one object per letter sound. Students find objects that begin with a sound and place them inside the correct egg (e.g., button for /Bb/, penny for /Pp/). Jumbo eggs work well for larger objects. This activity reinforces phonemic awareness and letter-sound association.
8. Math and Strategy Game: "Don't Put All Your Eggs in One Basket!"
Are you looking for a fun, brain-boosting spring activity that combines math, strategy, and a bit of suspense? Try "Don’t Put All Your Eggs in One Basket"! It’s perfect for small groups and will encourage your students to think critically about risk, reward, and number sense..
Here’s how it works: Five players each receive five plastic eggs in one color—yellow, green, pink, purple, or blue. On the table, there are five baskets, but here’s the catch: each basket has a hidden value ranging from 0 to 4, and the students won’t know which basket has which value! Students must place their eggs into the baskets using any strategy they choose:
- Put all the eggs in one basket,
- Spread them out evenly, or
- Use a mix of both strategies.
Once all the eggs have been placed in the baskets, the teacher reveals the value of each basket. Students then calculate their scores by tallying the number of eggs they placed in each basket by that basket’s value.
For example, if a student placed all five eggs in the basket worth 4, they would score a maximum of 20 points. However, if they put all their eggs in the basket worth 0, unfortunately, they would end up with a score of zero! The student with the highest score wins the round.
9. Is the Hand Quicker Than the Eye?
It's a fun game of observation and critical thinking! In pairs, one student hides a small object under one of the three identical egg halves and then slides the eggs around the table. The other student tries to guess where the object ended up. Great for building focus and tracking skills. Make sure you have three identical plastic egg halves per group.
10. Hide and Reveal Matching Game
The 'Hide and Reveal Matching Game' is an activity that promotes visual memory and concentration. By using egg halves to cover numerals or other content, you're challenging students to remember where the matching pair is, much like a memory game. Get my MATCHING GAMES BUNDLE with basic skills and CVC words.
Plastic eggs truly can be year-round learning tools. Whether supporting phonics, early math, or just adding fun to your routine, these ideas greatly use a simple material you may already have! Let me know in the comments if you've used plastic eggs in your way. I'd love to hear more about classroom creativity!
© 2025 Molly McMahon, Lessons by Molly
