our egg-citing ideas! creative ways to use plastic eggs with Littles!
- Our Grand Lives
- Apr 3
- 8 min read
Updated: Apr 11
Thursday, April 3, 2025
“Why are we so excited?” you may ask!
Because we’re gearing up to share our ideas with you all!
Springtime brings LOTS of bright and colorful plastic eggs
to store shelves everywhere!
Over the years - first as kindergarten teachers and now as Grands -
we’ve had LOTS of fun using them in a variety of ways!
You know us!
We love spending time with our Littles whenever we can
AND
we’re always looking for easy and inexpensive ways to add some fun to our days!
We always have a bag or two of plastic eggs on hand!
Littles of all ages will have lots of fun playing and learning with them!
Plastic eggs can be used for so many hands-on experiences…
we guarantee it!
We all look forward to our traditional Easter egg hunts!
Plastic eggs are a staple for Easter egg hunts,
allowing Littles to search for and collect them on Easter morning.
Many of us fill plastic eggs with chocolates and jelly beans
or small gifts and trinkets for our Littles to discover within!
SO FUN!
But those colorful plastic eggs can do so much more!
Plastic eggs are easy to clean, they can be quite durable and they are reusable!
Plastic eggs can be used for a wide variety of activities and purposes…
at Easter and beyond!
So, stock up when you can! You’ll be glad you did!
Plastic eggs intrigue our Littles!
They open, they close, they stack, they shake, they float,
they are bright and they are colorful!
Here are a few of our favorite ways to use them!
💚 Egg Rattles! (Infants & Older)
At only a few months old, Littles are beginning to track objects and reach for them and they enjoy tummy time, too! Add rice, dried beans, coins or buttons to different eggs to make different sounds! (NOTE: You will want to secure the two parts of the plastic eggs with a bit of super-glue - this is especially important when being made for infants and toddlers!) Shake the egg rattle as you move it in front of your infant Littles and watch their eyes follow! Once your Littles are able to sit independently they will have fun shaking eggs themselves! These make fun musical instruments for older Littles, too!
Here’s one of our favorite songs to move to when we shake our eggs!
🩷 Fill the Carton! (Infants & Older)
Easy peasy! This activity requires very little prep time! Simply set out empty plastic eggs and an empty egg carton, too! Young Littles will have fun exploring as they pick up the eggs and move them in and out of the carton! It doesn’t seem like much, but it will keep young Littles busy for a loooong time!
Older Littles love this, too!
They can sort, count and even fill the eggs as they add each to the carton!
💚 Scoop It Up! (Toddlers & Older)
This activity is a two-parter!
VERSION #1: This is the simpler version of this activity! Add plastic egg halves to a bin partially filled with water. Your Little will surely love picking up, scooping and pouring with the egg halves!
VERSION #2: This activity could be a bit messier, but for older toddlers (and your preschoolers and school-age Littles) this one will bring lots of joy! You’ll need plastic eggs, a variety of scoopers (ladles, slotted spoons, scoops and/or whisks), a large plastic bin and smaller ones and a large waterproof tablecloth - better still, take this activity outside on a beautiful spring day OR on a hot summer one!!
ANOTHER OPTION?
Add a few plastic eggs and kitchen utensils
to make bath time (or pool time) extra fun!
🩷 Feed the Eggs! (Toddlers & Older)
This activity provides excellent practice for Littles to develop eye-hand coordination and fine motor skills! Using Cheerios (like we did) or cotton balls or pom poms or any other small item, Littles simply fill the eggs with the objects and then take them out! This practice of in and out develops dexterity and really holds your Little’s attention!
Preschool Littles and older will be challenged
If you add a dice and/or tongs to the activity!
Littles roll one die and then add that many items to an egg!
Repeat to fill a carton with eggs!
💚 Get Moving! (Toddlers & Older)
You’ll need to do a little prep for this activity ahead of time but then you’ll be all set for a movement break, time and time again! Write a simple movement activity on individual slips of paper and then put one slip in each plastic egg. Put the eggs in a basket. When you and your littles want to take a break, take turns choosing an egg, opening it up and then completing the movement activity all together!
You can write individual movements on each slip of paper - hop like a frog or slither like a snake OR you can write different movement activities/games on each slip, providing time for a longer break - play a game of Hide-n-Seek or go outside and run around all the trees in your yard or go for a bike ride!
🩷 Rainbow Eggs! (Toddlers & Older)
This activity provides lots of entertainment for Littles (and you!) and is a great way to reinforce color recognition at the same time. Begin by making a game board, putting two dots of each rainbow color on a large sheet of white paper. (Use colors to match the plastic egg colors you have.)
Then let your Little match colors by placing a plastic egg half over each matching color! If your Littles are like ours, they will want to play this game over and over again!
Last year, we revisited this game multiple times! To make it more engaging as time passed, we tried two extensions - (1) Laura would say “ready, set, go” and her Little L would add the plastic egg halves as fast as she could and (2) Laura would hide the plastic egg halves and as Little L found them she’d add them to the board!
So proud!
💚 We’re Going On an Egg Hunt! (Toddlers & Older)
Toddlers and preschoolers LOVE to play Hide ‘n Seek games and this is a BIG one! A fun way to begin this activity is to read some books about Easter egg hunts together! Here’s a fun one!
Find a basket and some plastic eggs and give your Little time to practice for the big day! Last week, Laurie’s Little D hid and then searched for eggs for over an hour… she took multiple grown ups with her on her adventures! Little D loved these practice egg hunts as she hunted and hid while learning the colder and warmer clues along the way!
🩷 Memory Games! (Toddlers & Older)
Littles of ALL AGES will love to play one variation of these classic games or another!
WHERE’S IT HIDING? Last year, Laura’s Little L had fun finding the missing star!
This year we raised the stakes and she only had two tries to figure out where the jelly bean was hiding!
Somehow she found the jelly bean EVERY single time!
FIND THE MATCH! This game is a bit tricky since Littles are not matching egg colors… instead, they are trying to find matching items hidden underneath the egg halves!
Little L first enjoyed this game last year. At two, she did her best to find three pair of matching items hidden in the six egg halves!
This year, as a three-year-old, Little L had six pairs of eggs (12 halves!) to match and she was able to decide what six different items to hide - she needed two of each item!!
\
💚 ABC’s & 1, 2, 3! (Preschoolers & Older)
Recently, Laura and Little L also had fun turning plastic eggs into these easy learning games!
ABC MATCH! We had self adhesive foam letters that fit in the sections of an empty egg carton so I chose 12 to highlight in this activity. Also, ahead of time, I hid matching letters in 12 different plastic eggs. Little L was ready to play! She loved opening each egg and finding it’s home in the carton!
NO STICKERS? NO WORRIES!
Little strips of paper inside each egg and taped to the bottom of the carton
work just as well!
NUMBERS EVERYWHERE! Little L is learning to recognize her number 1-12 so this activity worked perfectly for her! For this activity I used the same egg carton as above, but turned it over! I wrote one number on the bottom (or top) of the carton and then wrote numbers on pieces of tape and put one on each egg half. Little L quickly got busy matching her numbers!
Instead of numbers, you could write dots to match quantities
or shapes or sight words… So many options!
🩷 Stack the Eggs!
All that’s needed are some colorful plastic eggs and you are ready to build! Add some empty toilet paper tubes or paper towel tubes and you’ve got an engineer at work! Be as simple or as elaborate as your Little wants!
From simple balancing!
To stacks where you wonder how high can we go?
You could even have a competition!
The last stack standing is the winner!
Be careful though… it’s harder than it looks!
Well?
Did we convince you that plastic eggs are not just for Easter morning?
We hope so!
In fact, we’re guessing that YOU may have some ideas for us, as well!
Please share if you have a fun way to use plastic eggs…
with OR even without your Littles!
Simply comment at the end of this post or email us directly at
Thanks, in advance, for sharing your ideas!
whenever you can!
You can find lots of great content there!
Come back tomorrow when we’ll share our WEEKLY SNAPSHOTS with you all!
Tomorrow’s highlights will include
a few personal snapshots from us both
as well as some Easter fun from OUR GRAND LIVES!
Currently, we are publishing new posts each Thursday and Friday.
We suggest subscribing to our site.
We'd love that and, of course,
then you'd never miss out when a new post becomes available!
As we bid you adieu with today's post,
check out this silly joke to share with your Littles!
SPECIAL THANKS TO
Home Matters from Days Filled with Joy
A Morning Cup of Joe from The Cottage Market
Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot from Women LIving Well AFter 50
Thank you for featuring this post on your sites!
❤ We love our blogging community! ❤
💗 We are delighted to join the following link up parties and blog hops! 💗
MONTHLY
SUNDAY
MONDAY
TUESDAY
WEDNESDAY
THURSDAY
FRIDAY
SATURDAY
You come up with the most clever ideas/activities!
Debra | Gma'sPhoto
These ideas are so fun! I love them. Thank you for sharing with us at The Crazy Little Lovebirds link party #83. :)
Steph@CrazyLittleLovebirds
Great ideas!! Now if only I had grandies...... Thanks for joining in on Home Matters Linky Party! I will be featuring your post this week! #HomeMattersParty xx
Hi Laura, fun activities for Easter and as always you've provided some wonderful ideas to try with our grandchildren. I've selected your post as one of my favourites to feature this week. x
So many great ideas of activities to do with those plastic eggs. You are so creative!