I’ve been asking my friends for creative ideas and here’s one from a Kindergarten teacher that I just love. It’s such an open ended craft with great learning potential.
My friend uses this as an introduction to numbers. She takes empty egg cartons and labels each compartment with numbers 1 through 12. A permanent marker works, but you can get really fancy and do stickers or computer printouts. The children have to find one of something, two of something else and so on. She provides things like counting bears, paper clips, buttons, pennies, or small pebbles. She says it’s a great help in teaching children number concepts.
What’s so great about this is that the inside labels don’t have to be numbers. You could do letters and have the children find small pictures or household items that start with that letter. Or you could do shapes and have the kids sort through blocks or precut paper shapes. I think it would be a great way to learn colors too. For younger children you could just color the inside of the compartment. For older ones who are learning to read you could do label the compartments with the actual color words. The kids could put marbles, colored chips, counting bears, tiny toys or pictures of things in their compartments.
If you are doing this activity at home instead of a classroom you could also use things like cheerios, fruit loops, and M&M’s. And you could use a muffin tin too; it seems cleaner than an egg carton if you are going to give the kids food.
The egg carton could also work for a scavenger hunt. The kids could have to find something white, something red, a pine cone, a rock, a dandelion, a leaf bigger than their hand, and so on.
Who knew egg cartons could be so fun?
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