Lesson - The Biggest Easter Basket Ever

Easter is almost here and we are getting so excited to celebrate. Enjoy listening to The Biggest Easter Basket Ever by Steven Kroll Illustrated by Jeni Bassett.

Art and Writing:

Materials:

1. White paper
2. Masking tape or green painters tape
3. Sidewalk chalk, crayons, or whatever you have to color in the spaces

(You can download written instructions from the calendar)

Numeracy challenge:

Now that we all have beautiful eggs with encouraging words hung up around our neighborhoods, make yourself a tally chart something like this on a piece of paper or in your journal/notebook:

Sample headings

• Easter Eggs Found in Windows
• Animals
• Flowers Growing
• Smile or Wave at Someone

Go walk around your neighborhood and put a tally under each section. See how many tallies you can get for each item and then write that number in the bottom box.

Extension Activities:

Easter Egg Number Match: Hide the pieces of plastic eggs around you house (you could also make egg shapes out of paper and cut them in half if you don’t have plastic eggs). Have children find all the pieces and make the matches.

You could also complete this activity with uppercase letters on one side and lowercase letters on the other to do a letter search and match. Have fun with it!

Sight Word or Alphabet Egg Hunt:

1. Number the outside of the egg with as many letters or words that you want to hide.
2. Put uppercase letters, lowercase letters, or sight words inside an egg.
3. Hide the eggs and the children hunt for them, open them, and write beside the number they found the letter or the word that was inside.
4. Happy hunting!

Other Fun Activities:

Story for Enjoyment: There was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Chick by Lucille Colandro Illustrated by Jared Lee

Video: Peep and The Big Wide World: The Mystery of the Thing that Went and Came Back -

Discussion questions to ask about the video:

Are Quack and Peep following the group plan?

What shape is the pink item that Peep found?

Why did the egg not roll in a straight line?

Pause the video at any time and ask what do you think might happen next?

How does Peep show he is a good friend?

Who took the big piece of the egg?

Why do Peep’s legs feel funny? Have you ever done something for a very long time and then your legs feel funny afterwards? What did you do?