Fun with EGGS!

So Chris & I are seriously thinking about  home schooling Liam. Chris has always been an advocate for home schooling and I was not sure but now I'm leaning towards going the home schooling route. There are a lot of reasons. Although Chris & I both were not home schooled we like the freedom it will give Liam. We've really noticed how smart Liam is. We're both shocked that at the age of 3 1/2 he can count to 250, add, subtract, count by 5s & 2s. can say the alphabet & knows all his letter sounds, and can even read. He is already advanced in math doing grade school level math. I really think he would be bored in kindergarden. Also with Chris' work schedule he would never see Liam or Blake. He works evenings and when the boys would be getting home from school Chris would be leaving for work. His day off is Monday and the boys would be in school all day. So there is still a lot to think about and I hope we make the right decision for both the boys. There are so many resources and tools now for home schooling and Texas is a state that really supports home schooling and makes it easy to do. I guess my only concern is that Liam gets to socialize with other kids, and even though Chris will be teaching too, I just hope  I will be confident enough to teach him. 

I decided to do a trial run of home schooling to just see what it would be like for both of us. So  I decided to start the first week in April for 5 days. With Easter coming I thought it would be an easy time to come up with ideas for themed lessons etc. I decided to do a Spring/Easter theme.  It was lots of fun. I found Liam really enjoyed learning and all the activities we did. Down side is that it does take a lot of preparation to plan each day's lesson but it was worth it. It gave me the confidence now that yes I can do this.

Here are some pictures of what Liam learned during his home school trial run week. Please note that a lot of these ideas are my own mixed in with ideas I got from others from Pinterest. I'm still learning how to post links up on my blog. So please check out my Pinterest page to see where I got my ideas from. I want to give credit to those wonderful teachers who are so generous to shares their ideas. I don't know how I would have been able to do this without looking to others for inspiration so a BIG THANK YOU :)

First we learned about Eggs. I had  Liam cut out an egg shape with blue construction paper. Then I cut out different animals that lay eggs and let him glue them on his big egg. I had this cute poem I found on pinterest about animals who lay eggs and he also glued it on his  egg.

We also sang a cute song about different animals who lay eggs. Liam really loves to sing so he enjoyed this one. It was to the tune of farmer in the dell. We just filled in the names of different animals who lay eggs and sang.


                                               EGG SONG  (Tune of Farmer in the Dell)

The Chickens give us eggs 
The Chickens give us eggs
Hi Ho The Derry O
The Chicken gives us Eggs

Add different animals such as penguin, spider, duck,  turtle etc.

I threw this together quickly with things I had on hand. I made it an easter/spring sensory tub. I added  rice, beans, plastic eggs, tongs, measuring cups, bunnies, sheep,  & stickers, Liam loved it!

Next up was color recognition. I knew Liam knew all his colors but I wanted to see him practice reading the color names on his own.  He had a worksheet with different easter eggs on it.  Under each egg had the name of a color. He had to read what the color was and color the egg that specific color. He did an awesome job.  He got 100%

Next was a fun game using sounds, and listening skills.

I grabbed some plastic easter eggs and filled them with different objects that made noise like rice, paper clips, coins etc. The trick was that two eggs had the same objects inside.

So Liam had to shake the eggs and see which two eggs made the same sound. For example the eggs that were filled with rice sounded different than the eggs filled with coins etc.

This was lots of fun for Liam. But I wish I taped the eggs shut because he did open some of the eggs up to see what was inside. But I made him start over. Ha Ha!

Next we did  a little science experiment called Sink or Float

I filled plastic easter eggs with different object and had Liam see if they would sink or float

Liam then checked off which colored plastic eggs would float or sink

Here's another song we sang too about Easter Eggs.

Easter Eggs

tune: Jingle Bells

Easter eggs, Easter eggs,

Eggs of orange and blue.

Here are lots of colored eggs

All for me and you.

Chocolate eggs, colored eggs,

Jelly beans bright green

Aren't these the most

beautiful eggs

That you have ever seen?

Next was learning patterns with colored eggs.  I knew this was a skill I had not worked with Liam too much on so I thought this would be an fun way to teach him about patterns & sequence with color.

I would start a color pattern or he would and then he would finish the pattern.  It took  him a few tries in the beginnin but once he got it he was off flying with it. So easy to practice with these eggs.

Then we finished the Egg theme with decorating real easter eggs for Easter.


Some other activities we did that I didn't get a chance to take pictures of were:
Alphabet Scavenger Hunt - It was like playing Bingo. I had a chart with all the letters of the alphabet in lower case. I then hid eggs that were filled with one of each letter in the alphabet in upper case. Liam had to find the eggs and match the upper case letter with the lower case letter on the bingo chart.
We also played Animal Charades using the pictures we had of animals who laid eggs.
We had fun playing with eggs during a Egg Relay Race. We used  plastic easter eggs & a spoon and went outside with Daddy and tried to balance our eggs on our spoons. Fun Fun!

Who thought you could have so much fun with eggs but we sure did!