The First Grade Lunchbox: Easter

Spring is officially here! We just returned from Spring Break, celebrated Easter and the weather is finally warmer :-)

One of my favorite projects is for Easter. We read The Easter Egg by Jan Brett and then use watercolors to create our own fabulous eggs. They absolutely love getting to use their paints and love that they get to totally design their own enormous egg.

After they paint we write about their incredible egg. They describe what it is made out of (like in the story) or describe the colors and pattern they used.

Of course I loved the egg about the 'Best Teacher' ;-)

We also did a new project this year 'I Spy Spring' which the kids and I both really enjoyed. I got the idea from Erica Boher's page. If you click on the link it will take you to the printable sheets.

They were all very creative in describing what they say now that Spring is finally here.

Finally we worked with another story by one of our favorite authors; Doreen Cronin. We LOVE the Click, Clack books and this was a great spring book.

This story lends itself really nicely to S.W.B.S.T. (Somebody Wanted But So Then). This is a great way for students to follow a story's plot...but it can be hard to find the right book to use.

To go along with the book we did this fun craftivity, which of course, includes a S.W.B.S.T. activity.

There was also a part to identify all of the characters and suggest what they would try to get the baby duck to fall asleep :-)

Our Spring hook area turned out adorable!

To get this craftivity click on the link to go to my store.

One of my favorite books to do at Easter time is The Easter Egg by Jan Brett. Her books are always full of good messages and the pictures are, of course, beautiful. After we read this story I give each student a very large white egg which they get to paint however they choose. I use a 12x18 piece of white construction paper for each egg. They really love this project because they get to use their watercolors which we don'st use all that often.

This is a spider web egg - can you see the cute little spider hiding at the bottom??

After their egg is complete I have them write about their egg. Some students choose to describe the way their egg looks-others like tell me a little story.

They really make a bright, colorful display in the hallway :-)

For a fun Easter math activity we spent an afternoon sorting jelly beans. I used just the old fashioned Brach's jelly beans and filled a little cup for each student. I think it took me 3 bags and I have 23 students. At this point in the year they have done a few activities like this and are used to a format that is similar for our daily calendar math pages (click on the link to grab them for FREE), so they are able to do this fairly independently (silent cheer)!