For the next few weeks

We are doing a Plastic Egg Project

Every day we are going to try a new activity

That involves plastic eggs

Hobbycraft have very kindly donated a number of eggs

As well as a few other bits and bobs we will need

Esther and William are very eggcited about the project

And yesterday we made a start

I decided to start with a simple phonics activity

This was really aimed at Esther who is not very confident with reading

But it was also good revision for William and enabled him to practise his writing

To make the activity appealing

I got a lovely old wicker basket and filled it with green shredded paper

I then got the brightly coloured plastic eggs and some letter tiles

I used the tiles from two word games we have

Appletters and Pairs in Pears

I made three letter words for each egg

CVC words

Consonant Vowel Consonant

cat dog pan

The idea for the game was that Esther and William would take turns to choose an egg

They would open the egg

Look at the letters

Say the letter names and the letter sounds

Try to build a real word

Sound it out, blend the sounds and so read the word they have made

They would then try to write the word

To make the writing fun

We used chunky markers and wrote on a mirror

For every word they made and read they were rewarded with a white chocolate coin

If they could also write the word they were given a second chocolate coin

They are allowed to eat one or two sweets and the rest are saved in the Snack Bank

For them to enjoy later on

Both Esther and William really enjoyed the game

William was very good at building words on sight of the letters

Where it took Esther a few attempts to build a word

Esther was able to write the words beautifully

Where William needed help to form the letters

There was an added challenge to the writing

As they could not copy the letters

As I wanted them to write in lower case

And the tile letters were capitals

The whole game was also great for their fine motor skills

Opening the eggs

Opening the chocolate coins

Manipulating the tiles

And controlling the pens

This was a very simple activity to set up

And one that we all enjoyed

It will be great to extend this game

Looking at longer and more complex words

But for the moment

After a busy day at school

This CVC game provided challenge enough

An eggcellent start to our

Plastic Egg Project