Jelly Beans

* Give kids a handful to sort and create a graph showing what they have.  They can make a pictograph, bar graph, pie chart or spreadsheet.

* Estimate how many are in a jar, then create arrays from each color to make counting easier. 

* Give handfuls and ask kids to make "fair shares" with the beans.  "How many beans would each person get if there were five friends coming over?  Or two friends?  What about eight friends?  Will there be any leftovers?  Is there a way to fair share leftovers?"

* Older kids can find the mean, median and mode in their handful of jelly beans.

* Create 3-dimensional shapes using jelly beans and toothpicks - cubes, pyramids, etc.

Plastic Eggs

*Put magnetic letters inside eggs.  Have kids pick several eggs out of a basket and create as many words as possible from the letters.

*Create simple matching games for little ones.  For example, write number words and numbers on small pieces of cardstock and place in eggs.  Kids open eggs and try to make correct matches.  You could do this with any number of skills:  contractions, math problems, clocks, money, homonyms/synonyms/antonyms, etc.

*Put vocabulary words in eggs.  Have your child draw a few eggs and create a great sentence, paragraph or story using the words. 

Art/Crafts

*Cut small squares from tissue paper.  Mix 1 cup of warm water with 1 TBSP of vinegar.  Dip a piece of tissue paper into water, then lay on the shell of a hard-boiled egg.  Add more tissue paper to the egg.  When dry, peel off tissue paper for very fancy colored eggs.

*Save your colored shells after eating the eggs.  Crush them into small pieces and create mosaics by gluing the crushed pieces onto stiff paper.

Rabbits

Whether you do the Easter Bunny or not, spring is a great time to do a mini-unit on rabbits.  We're going to put our info together in a lapbook.  Here's what we plan to research:

*What's the difference between a rabbit and hare?

*What is a rabbit's habitat?

*What do they eat?

*When are they active?

*Do rabbits have predators?

*What defense mechanisms do rabbits use?

*What parts of the world do you find rabbits?

*Do rabbits live as families?

We'll also:

*draw rabbits and label their parts

*create a diorama of a rabbit habitat

*create map showing where rabbits are found

*write a rabbit tale

*do some sort of rabbit food recipe

*check out lots of rabbit fiction and nonfiction from the library