This morning started off looking quite dreary and we thought we'd be resigned to a day of indoor play, but it turned out that wasn't the case.
We began with our regular morning routine, then we launched right into the art project for today- coloring Easter eggs!
First, the older children drew on the egg shells with a white crayon.
After the eggs were ready, I presented the children with all the bottles of food coloring we had. We wanted to make a rainbow of eggs, so we lined the dyes up from red to purple and then realized we were missing orange. We thought about what colors we would need to mix together to make orange, and it is clear that we've talked about color mixing often because they had no trouble figuring out we needed to mix yellow and red. After that, the children took turns squeezing in drops of food coloring into jars of vinegar. The littles helped under close supervision... we didn't want lots of green or purple fingers!
Next, we dropped one egg into each jar of dye and used chopsticks to gently turn the eggs so they were evenly colored. I helped the littles swirl their chopsticks gently.
Soon we had a rainbow of lovely Easter eggs set out to dry in the egg carton.
While they dried, we read a set of three little sight word books about Easter and then did some fun life cycle ordering activities. We looked at a set of four pictures that represented the life cycle of chickens- egg, chick, pullet, and hen, and we put the pictures in order. After that, we thought about other animals that come from eggs, and we could think of lots- robins, cardinals, alligators, and snakes to name a few. We looked at some pictures of frogs as they mature from eggs to adults. The children thought it was very interesting that tadpoles have to stay in the water while frogs can be in or out of the water.
After our morning snack, we decieded to head to the big park. It's a long trek, but one that is well worth it.
The littles had a wonderful time rocking on the bouncy riders, climbing stairs, swinging in the swings, going down slides, and watching the other children at the park.
The big kids did much the same things and added in a cartwheel here and there.
All in all it was a great day and we're all looking forward to the Easter Bunny's visit this Sunday.
See you next week!