Plastic Eggs and STEAM

Do you have a ton of plastic eggs left over from Easter?  Would you like to put them to good educational use?  Then read this post about how I use them in STEAM activities!


Math & Science Activities

Activity 1:  Play-Doh and Egg Towers
Skills:  Angles, height, measurement
Believe it or not, there's so many different angles and ways to build an egg tower.  Challenge your students to build the highest tower and use a ruler or meter stick to measure and make it official.

Activity 2:  Half-Shell Egg Towers
Skills:  Measurement, stacking, balancing

It's more challenging than you might think to balance the half shells of the eggs!  Have students make the highest tower possible and measure with a ruler or meter stick to measure the height.

Art & Science Activities


Activity 1:  Drip Painting
Skills:  Gravity, color-mixing

This painting activity from Learn, Play, Imagine is inspiring!  You can talk about the reason the paint falls through the egg (gravity).  You can mix colors and talk about primary, secondary, and tertiary colors.

Activity 2: Stamping Letter and Words
Skills: Spelling, Circumference, color-mixing

In this stamping activity from I Can Teach My Child,  you can have students cut out large letters or words out of plain paper (or cut it out for them if they don't have the proper skills).  Then have them use half the egg to mix colors and stamp all over the paper. You can measure the circumference of the stamp circles and talk about the different primary, secondary, and tertiary colors.

Technology. Engineering & Science Activities

Activity 1: Egg Catapults
Skills: Angles, building using simple machines, angles

This egg catapult activity from Science Buddies is great for older students.  The project guide gives step-by-step directions on how to build the catapult and launch the eggs.  You can measure the angle of the catapult and measure the distance the eggs fly.  What a fun activity!

How do you upcycle your plastic eggs?  I'd love to hear how!

The Miraculous Journey of Edward Toulane-Velveteen Rabbit Reading Comprehension

Are you ready bunnies, read-alouds, and reading comprehension?  Then read on to see how I incorporate them in my The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane/Velveteen Rabbit Packet!

I love, love, love Kate DiCamillo!  One of my favorite books by her is The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane. Upper elementary students love this book just as much as I do.  In case you're not familiar with the book, it's a fantasy book about a stuffed rabbit that becomes lost at sea and journeys around trying to find his way home.  It's a great book to talk about perseverance and the fantasy genre. I always like to read this book just before spring break because it ties in nicely with the season. 

Another of my favorite rabbit books: The Velveteen Rabbit. While these two books have completely different plots, they are similar in many ways. They both are of the fantasy genre, have a rabbit as the main character, and involve the loss of a favorite toy.

I like to read Edward Tulane as a class, and then split into pairs/small groups to read The Velveteen Rabbit.  

I created a  comprehension packet  for use with the books that incorporates the following skills/subjects:  

~Compare and contrast 
~Science (habitats/ecosystems) 
~Research (online and print resources) 
~Writing (conventions/editing/adjectives/creating mental images) 
~Comparing fiction/fantasy to nonfiction texts 
~Making inferences  


Do you love these books or similar titles?  I'd love to hear about your favorite rabbit books!