Happy Easter!

Dramatic Play
We welcomed in spring with a Flower Shop. It's pretty simple, with lots of silk flowers from Dollar Tree. I had used pots with foam blocks in them in the past, but they just broke the foam into pieces and made a mess. So I set this up without them, and decided to add if needed, but they did just fine so I never added them.
They made bouquets for each other, for their mom's and grandma's, and they even built vases out of the blocks in the block center, so we had some beautiful displays over there.


Blocks
Day 1, I had the gymnastics mat out for some large motor play. I also had a bunch of balloons left over from my son's birthday party, so I put them all down there. They were a huge hit. They loved playing "don't let the balloon hit the ground" and passing them together. After one got stuck to the ceiling, we learned about static, and had lots of kids rubbing balloons on their hair in front of the mirror, and sticking them to the walls.

Day 2, I had out the ABC capital/small letter matching eggs, plus an item to go inside each letter. They had fun matching them, filling them, and then hiding them from each other. In fact, I just found a few more setting up our summer stuff, 2 weeks later :)


Art
Marble painting! I used egg shaped paper. They'd put it in the tray, then scoop a marble out of the paint with the spoon, and roll the tray around so the marble could paint their paper. They loved it.

Potato stamps. They're about the shape of an easter egg, so they're perfect for easter pictures. Some had simple designs carved in them, while a few were plain. Most kids didn't just stamp, and smeared them all over their papers.


Small Manipulatives
Easter/Spring magnets

1-10 Easter puzzle from here

E is for Easter mat with flat marbles


Writing
Easter stickers


Snack
We made egg salad to eat on crackers. They each got to peel a boiled egg. It was time-consuming, but it's a great fine motor skill! Then they got to take turns mashing them, and we stirred in mayo and salt. They each got some on their plates to dip their cracker in. All the kids tried it, and more than half liked it and ate it all! That's pretty successful for 4 year olds.

Outside
The sensory table was filled with macaroni and plastic eggs. The eggs somehow became bombs buried in the orchard too. Most remained eggs, but you gotta love their imaginations.
They also just enjoyed the spring weather, playing on the swingset, sandbox, and playhouse.

Large Group
We learned lots of fun new Easter songs. I found this version of Peter Cottontail on youtube to teach them, and all these other videos were there too, so we tried some more. We did the Bunny Hokey Pokey, 10 Little Bunnies, and B-U-N-N-Y. We all loved how fun and active the songs were.

Day 1, we read the book, Best Easter Eggs Ever, and we dyed our boiled eggs using plants. We actually put them in before we read and sang, to give them more time. We used beets, spinach, and grape juice. The grape juice worked the best, spinach the least. It was a fun experiment.

Day 2, we read The Old Lady Who Swallowed a Chick. We then used peeps and other Easter marshmallow candies to make towers with toothpicks. It was a fun engineering project.

Small Group
Miss Kim's group learned more about letter E, capital and small. They used dot markers and these pages to stamp the letter Es. Many of them came home stamped everywhere :) Before you worry, most of the kids followed directions and got the Es. They just can't resist those markers, and proceeded to stamp the rest of their papers. It's preschool, so no biggie!

My group learned about measuring weight with a balance scale, and the words heavier and lighter. I had small eggs filled with different objects. They would hold 2 and guess which was heavier and lighter, then weigh them. After they each had a few turns doing that, they then added eggs to each side until they could get them to balance. They really liked this activity!