I found these cool plastic Easter eggs on sale for $0.99 at Michaels craft store Tuesday night, and knew they would make perfect egg shakers. They are made out of sturdier plastic than regular eggs, and I love that one half is a colored egg and the other half is clear.
DIY Egg Shakers
These simple DIY egg shakers were easy to put together! We filled half of them with poly pellets. Then I decided to make things a little more interesting, so we used colored rice, quinoa, pinto beans, and black beans to fill the remaining eggs. I sealed the eggs shut with electrical tape – it’s hard for little fingers to peel off and stretchy enough that it only bunches a tiny bit at the narrow end of each egg. And it gives each egg a “fancy” black stripe. Duct tape also works well.
All three kids enjoy playing with them:
Lily uses them properly the most frequently – turns out they make perfect baby toys!
Emma and Johnny spent much of yesterday afternoon pretending to be Easter bunnies and hiding the eggs. They would then go find them for me, and tell me what a good job I was doing of finding the eggs. That’s my kind of game!
There are many structured ways to use egg shakers: you can have children shake their eggs to the beat of a song, talk about how different fillings in the eggs make different noises, have one child shake their egg and ask the other children to try to walk to the beat of the egg shaker… If you make fancy clear shakers like us, you can even talk about how static electricity makes some of the fillings (quinoa in particular) stick to the inside walls of the shaker!
How would you use these egg shakers with your kids?
MaryAnne lives in Silicon Valley with her Stanford professor husband Mike and their four children. She writes about parenting through education, creativity, and play. Mama Smiles - Joyful Parenting is a space to share crafts, hands on learning activities, and family outings that enrich lives and bring families together.
