Okay, so this weekend is the big day! Easter is finally here. You are more than likely spending today with family or friends and eating a holiday brunch, last-minute shopping for those white patent leather shoes, or chasing your son or daughter around at an Easter Egg hunt. Looking ahead to Monday, you will be in an Easter sugar coma surrounded by dozens hundreds (they multiply overnight) of plastic Easter eggs that are starting to look like the sock pile on your living room couch. Some are intact and others are lying around without a half. No matter how much you want to get rid of all of those pastel plastic eggs, DON’T THROW THEM AWAY YET! Those egg cartons could come in handy too.
Go ahead and open up those eggs and get all the goodies out and then save them for these fun ideas:
1. Shakers
For these noisemakers, simply take a dry food item like beans or rice and fill an egg up. Don’t forget to tape up the egg so that you don’t end up with a mess. My crew used fun washi tape.
2. Play-Doh Cutters
Take a break from your alligator or heart cutter and make circles with half an egg. You can even take this a step further and use a plastic knife to instruct on fractions.
3. Snack Containers
Your child might find it fun to eat goldfish crackers out of an egg. The larger eggs can actually hold quite a few. If you want to take it up a notch, try this Easter Egg Bento idea.
4. Arts and Crafts
The sky is the limit for this item. You can paint with them by taking them apart so that the half is dipped in paint to make circles on a paper or canvas. Speaking of canvas, why not hot glue gun egg halves to the background to spell out your child’s name? Finally, if you have saved your egg carton, place the egg half in it and use the egg to hold paint.
5. Decoration
You might think that you can only decorate with Easter eggs for Easter, but spring just sprung, so keep those eggs out a bit longer for some spring decorating. Place them in trays or vases for pops of color. If you love gardening, be sure to try this flower pot idea that ultimately ends up being a decoration.
Continued with Educational Games and Activities Ideas
6. Color Sorting or Patterns
Simply take the eggs apart and have your child match the colors while saying the color word. Also, you could have your child play around with creating patterns of eggs. For more of a challenge, have the child mix up the halves of the eggs and create patterns.
7. Rhyme Time
Take one half of an egg and write a letter close to the opening. On the other half, write the rest of the letters that when turned, the words will rhyme.
8. Number Recognition
This is a good activity to do with a child who needs to make connections with numbers. Create strips with a number, a number word, and a tally mark (i.e. 3, three, III), and hide one strip in each egg. When the hunt is over the child can make matches, which will include three strips.
9. Sight/Spelling Word Review
Take your child’s sight words or spelling words, write them on strips of paper, fold them up, and tuck them in the egg. Have your child go on a hunt for the eggs and open them to reveal the above words. To give your child more of a challenge, you could even leave a letter or two out of each word and have them complete it once the hunt is over. This is a variation of the above, so you can have your child create sentences with those sight words or spelling words.
10. Money Hunt
This is a good one for a child who is in the beginning stages of learning currency. Purchase some play money (or use the real thing) and place different coins in each egg. Once your child hunts the eggs, have that child identify the type of coin and amount. If your child is beyond that, have him/her add up the money to reveal a total amount.
Bonus Idea
11. Scavenger Hunt
Since Easter is tomorrow, it’s not too late to print this out and cut up the strips to lead your child to finding their Easter basket in the morning. I’ve done the work for you. Happy Hunting! Easter Morning Scavenger Hunt
Do you have any other ideas on how to reuse those plastic Easter eggs? Please share in the comments below!
You can use them for Resurrection Eggs, or other Bible or classic stories (Goldilocks and the 3 Bears, yellow string for her hair, bear sticker, oatmeal, chair, etc). Our kids (2&5) love being able to “tell” us stories using the eggs.
Dawn, those are great ideas! Resurrection eggs are great…we bought some a couple years ago from a Christian bookstore, but it would be cheaper to create your own? Also, the storytelling idea is fun and allows for lots of imagination and creativity. Thanks for sharing! Happy Easter!
Hi Lyndsey :)) Thanks for all the great suggestions! Being a 70’s girl I have to add one more that’s really just for the laugh – use the eggs to pack up your hosery. Anyone remember L’Eggs Pantyhose? Are they still around? I really loved collecting those egg containers and using them for all sorts of things :))
Sandy, too funny? I do remember L’Eggs! And yes, those containers are useful!
The best way to reuse them would be to just use them again for Easter the next year….and next….and next. Why even consider throwing them out or reuse them for weird art that you’ll toss anyway?
Consider donating them to the local library or park that hosts Easter egg hunts. They try to encourage kids to get their prize out and give them back but not everyone does so they loss a bunch every time. They will happily take your extra and add them to their stash for next Easter.