Easter Egg Letter Hunt

I love holidays.  EVERY holiday.  I love doing "normal" everyday things inside of a holiday theme.  Who doesn't love eating their PB&J in the shape of a bunny instead of a square?  Or playing a letter matching game after having to hunt down the letters inside of eggs all around your playroom?  HELLO.  FUN.TIMES.

This week I decided not to introduce a new letter to B, but to review the 7 letters we have already talked about.  He loves hands-on activities (what kid doesn't?!), so I decided I had to think of something that would get and KEEP his attention.  And since Easter is approaching, there is only one answer...an Easter egg letter hunt.

I put this activity together in about 8 minutes, right before B woke up from his nap.  All you need is:  paper, markers, alphabet letters (I used letter magnets from the Dollar Store), plastic Easter eggs, and an Easter basket.

I started by taking out the letters I was going to use, because using all 26 would be too much too handle at once for a 3 year old.  I used the 7 letters that B and I have been working on: B,M,S,A,H,T,C plus E and N (to finish out his name) and P (a letter we will be learning in the near future).  I chose these letters so that when matching them, he would have immediate success naming most of them, and excitement over a few new ones.

I put each letter in an egg and hid them around the playroom.  I also hid a piece of candy (that B had been begging for all day) inside another egg before hiding it.

B was psyched from the second I told him what we were going to do.  He wanted them to ALL be filled with candy and was initially disappointed when I told them they weren't.  However, I told him that once he found all of the letter eggs and matched them up, that we could play again and I would put some yummy treats in a few more eggs and use fewer letters.  He loved that idea and set out on a mission to find all the eggs.

He LOVED opening each egg to find either a letter or a treat (2nd round) and enjoyed naming all of the letters as he matched them on his sheet.

The sheet I made had each letter I hid written on it in the same color as the letter magnet.  That way it is a matching game of colors and letters.  Also, very helpful for the few letters he is not familiar with.

This activity is so much fun and so easy to just throw together any time of the day or year!

B was obsessed and wanted to keep doing it over and over again.  I will probably do it with him again right before Easter with some new letters and a few objects that correspond with the letters.  

I made each letter the same size as the magnet and B loved that the letter "disappeared" when he covered it with the magnet.