The Little Rabbit - Easter/Spring Shelf Work

This is our first unit with a major holiday mixed in, so our shelves represent two themes.  The first week we are working on our Easter activities, and the second week we will work on Spring activities.  In the video they are mixed together, because that’s how I have them on the shelf (I tend to put things on the highest shelf that I might not want E to grab on her own). 

 In this post I’ll split the activities up.

First, Easter!

Invitation to Play with Playdoh

This first activity uses a veggie tray with various slots that I have used for spring/Easter cookie cutters, big googly eyes, white pipe cleaners (I don’t have pink, boo!), different shapes and colors of buttons, and some pouch caps.  We will probably recycle this after Easter for a spring playdoh tray.

Easter Egg Shakers

I used plastic eggs and filled them rice, and wrapped washi tape around to secure (still watch tots with this, E keeps trying to open them to find a prize!).  I found some cute rhymes and songs for Easter that I printed so I can sing them while E shakes her eggs.  This is something I hope to incorporate more into our totschooling adventure, rhymes and songs.

Easter Eraser Sorting

Using a 6 cup muffin tin, I have E sort these erasers (there are 12 total; 2 pairs of 6) she is to put a matching pair in each cup.  The erasers came from the Dollar Tree.

Pattern Egg Sorting

We haven’t done any sorting by patterns (that I can think of anyway) so I cut some egg shapes out of scrapbook paper in pairs of two.  The idea is to match up the eggs by their pattern mate.

Egg Sorting by Color

These little puffy eggs were an impulse by in the Target dollar spot.  E is going to sort them by color.

Easter Egg Do-a-Dot

Printable from here.  I printed out two copies of the eggs. The first one we are going to use our pomp om magnets (so E can repeat this activity as she pleases), the second we will use our do-a-dot markers.

Easter Egg Surprise

I filled these plastic Easter eggs with matching colored pom poms, this is giving E fine motor practice in opening the eggs and color matching to put the correct pom pom back in the egg.  She is trying to work on closing the egg, but still has a hard time with that (honestly, I sometimes do too, these eggs are so flimsy!).

Bunny Tail Match

This printable is from here.  Laminate the printable, add Velcro tabs to the bunny’s behinds, and matching color mini pom poms, and ta-da!  E loves Velcro! 

Counting Eggs

Got the idea from here.  Stitched up 10 eggs, and wrote numbers using fabric paint on them.  Hoping to work on putting the numbers in order, and using plastic Easter eggs to count out how many correlate to the felt eggs.  These are seriously so cute, I wish I could use them year round (and I might!).

Spring (second week activities):

Felt Flower Buttons

I got the idea for this from here.  I hot glued large buttons onto popsicle sticks then cut matching ‘flower’ shapes out of felt for threading onto the button.  It is a bit hard to maneuver because the bottons are glued down at the bottom, but I really just want to get E to practice her buttoning so this seemed a more fun way than using a shirt.  =)

Flower vs Animal Sorting

All of the Little Rabbit printables came from here.  The idea for this activity is to sort the small cards into animal or flower categories.  E is pretty good at this activity.

Common Bird Cards

Printable from here (you have to subscribe). I printed out the control cards for a few of the more abundant birds in our area.  We are going to use them when we look at our Backyard Birds book, as well as when we go on a nature walk.  Right now, E mostly calls all birds ‘birds’.  There are exceptions (ie. Owls, geese, ducks, etc.) but I am hoping she will learn a few names such as robin, cardinal, sparrow, etc. from this exercise.

Pipcleaner Worm Transfer

I made these little ‘worms’ out of pipecleaners (this is the closest worm color I had), and bent them a little so they’d look wiggly.  With tweezers E is going to practice transferring the worms out of the basket, she has also had fun ‘feeding’ the worms to our little shelf robin.

3-Part Cards

I know rhubarb is going to give E a hard time, and maybe hutch.  Hopefully she will be able to add these words to her vocabulary this week.

Kite Counting Activity

I made kite shapes out of scrapbook paper, and wrote the numbers 1-5 on them.  I then attached yarn as the kite strings.  We are going to use pony beads to string the same number of beads on the kite as are written.  E hasn’t been fond of stringing beads thus far, so hopefully she is able to master it this time around.

Little Rabbit Card Matching

I think these are for a traditional memory game, but we are just working on matching the correct pictures to each other.