Apparently, searching for eggs never gets old. My nine-year-old son Raisin and my five-year-old preschool Strawberry both loved search for eggs in our home and our yard, time and time again, on Easter. I told Strawberry that I’d hide eggs for her yet again today if she would read the words found inside each one! I choose words that she could read with a little sounding out help, and she loved acting them out in our early reading egg hunt this morning!
Setting up the Egg Hunt
The most challenging part for Strawberry was waiting. I had to set up our impromptu learning moment. It only took about 5 minutes, but for a five-year-old kid, that feels like a long time! I cut index cards into small rectangles and wrote the words on them. I chose some simple CVC and sight words that I knew she would recognize.
Here are the words that I chose.
- go
- cat
- pat
- hop
- pop
- sit
- hug
- pet
- mom
- dad
- car
- dog
- spin
- jump
- stop
I knew that with sounding out help, Strawberry would be able to determine what these words were.
Egg Hunt Fun
Strawberry was delighted that I agreed to hide the eggs for her. Big brother was working on his school work, and she wanted to search again and again. Because I put “acting out” words in the eggs, it ended up being a double gross motor activity. That is, she both ran around searching for the eggs and she had to act out the words once she read them!
The hardest words for her were the three with blends in them. I knew that would be the case, but knew that with my help she would be up to the challenge. She loved that each word had a way for her to act out: vroom like a car, hug her baby sister, crawl and bark like a dog. She rolled her eyes at Mom and Dad, though! She’s known those as sight words for quite a long time.
In the end, we had a fun time together. I knew that, with the advent of wonderful spring weather, it would be difficult to get her to “do school” with me of any kind. adding in a little school to the activity she already wanted to do was so fun. Early reading should not really be about dull readers and pointer fingers. Making it an activity like this was perfect for my active learner.
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Note: You can get 8 early reading action cards in the Action Cards Sampler, or you can get even more action cards in the full product. (Not all the words in the full product are early reading words.)
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