Now I Know My ABC’s ~ Ee is for Egg

 An Extraordinary Egg by Leo Lionni

Summary: Three frogs find a pebble that turns out to be an egg. One frog, Marilyn, declares that it is a chicken egg. They are surprised at all the things their “chicken” can do and laugh when they find the chicken’s mother and she called it her little alligator. This is a simple, funny, beginning book for children.

ABC Letter Introduction Activity

I like to introduce each letter in a fun way. Sometimes we use our Letter Box, other times ABC I Spy Bottles, but for our E theme, it was fitting to use plastic eggs! I printed letter E pictures small enough to fit inside the egg. Then I hid those eggs around the room and had the little girls find them. Once all the eggs were found, we gathered together and opened them and said the name of each picture in the egg. I pointed out the beginning sounds of each word.


Then we used the same eggs to do a upper/lower case letter game. I made sure to place the capital letters all on the same side of all the eggs so that the girls were matching capital/lower case letters and not necessarily colors. So we could have a purple bottom egg with a blue top etc as long as there was a capital E and a lowercase e together.

Other Egg Books


We read Guess What is Growing Inside This Egg by Mia Posada. This is a wonderful book that teaches children that chickens aren’t the only animal that hatches from eggs.  One page has a picture of an egg with a poem. The next page shows what is in the egg and gives more facts on that animal.

ABC Crafts

We made a moveable egg that hid the letter E. Since I had my 4yr. old and 2yr. old wanted to do this craft, I had one make a capital E and the other a lowercase e. You can find the complete egg craft instructions on my blog.

We also painted our own eggs. Our goal was to try to use colors found in nature for this craft.

I thought their eggs turned out great! We placed them in a homemade nest for a nature display.

ABC Theme Activities


 
We did several sorting activities centered around eggs. For this particular activity I had my 4yr. old and 2yr. old sort objects that were hard and soft. I had to laugh at my 2yr. old because she squeezed each object as hard as she could before she would tell me if it was hard or soft.

 
I pulled out various plastic animals from our stash that were oviparous (egg-laying). We named the animal and then I asked whether or not they hatched from an egg. I then explained that yes, even a bee etc. hatches from an egg. You can go one step further and throw some mammals in the mix and then have your child separate egg-laying from non-egg laying animals.

 
I found some mini-plastic eggs at the local hobby store and a ice-stick tray. The girls used a spoon to transfer the mini-eggs into the rows on the ice-tray.

 
Of course since we were talking about eggs, we needed to observe one up close! I went over the simple names of the parts of an egg. We also compared a hard-boiled egg to a raw egg. After the observation time was over, we ate the rest of the hard-boiled eggs for a snack.

Songs

Little Egg
(sung to: London Bridges)
Written by: Kids World Exploration
Little chick goes peep, peep, peep
Peep, peep, peep
Peep, peep, peep
Little chick goes peep, peep, peep
When it hatched from its egg.
Additional verses:
Little snake goes hiss, hiss, hiss
Little duck goes quack, quack, quack
Little fish goes bloop, bloop, bloop
Little bird goes chirp, chirp, chirp

Downloads
For each letter I will be providing several downloadable resources plus a letter planner page. You can find these resources at Spell Outloud’s HSPrintables.

Other Theme Resources:
Simply Made: Eggs by Totally Tots
ABC Egg Book on Totally Tots
Egg Letter Craft

Other ABC Resources:
ABC Printables from Homeschool Creations
Letter of the Week Curriculum from COAH
ABC Flashcards and More from 1+1+1=1
ABC Letter Crafts
Songs for Saplings ABC Verses