Now that Easter is over for the year and you have most likely helped your kids eat their way through all of the chocolate eggs, it is quite possible that you are left with a pile of plastic shells, if you went that route this year. Instead of chucking them in the bin and adding to the waste of the world, grab a container and store them as items that can be used for fun and educational STEM activities. 

While there are countless things you can do with these curved pieces of plastic, I will share three of my favourite activities with you, which will hopefully inspire a fun learning activity to do with your students, or with your own kids at home.

3 Easter Egg Stem Activities

1. Build A Tower

This is the simpler of the games and is more likely to entertain your toddlers and perhaps pre-schoolers. The concept is simple in that the kids are encouraged to use the halved egg-shells to build a tower, by stacking them on top of each other. You could challenge the little ones to see who builds the tallest tower, ask them to name the colours they have used in their building and then you can count the egg halves together.

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2. Matching Flash Cards

This activity requires a little bit of preparation in that you will have to create the flash cards. You can either hand-draw your cards or use a computer and print them out (and then laminate them for safe keeping). The challenge is to give the kids the flash cards one at a time, and then they need to search for halves that match the colours used in the cards, and then connect them as shown in the picture. This is an awesome way to develop matching and recognition skills as well as to learn colours. 

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3. Play-dough Engineering

And then there is my all-time favourite, why? Because it keeps my own three-year-old son busy for at least 30 minutes! This is an excellent STEM activity and it can be adapted to challenge students of all ages. You’ll need your egg halves, some quality playdough and some creative little minds. With very young kids you can keep the task simple by simply allowing them to potter around with the materials and let them explore as they wish. With older kids you can give them challenges to do, like build a house or a bridge using only the plastic eggs and playdough, strongest structure wins!

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Such an awesome way to recycle plastic and entertain the kids with some educational fun, don’t you think? On searching the net I saw that these little cup halves were also used as planters for seedlings, cookie cutters and even packaging for tiny gifts, making them quite the versatile little things and a definite must have for any class store-room!