My seven year-old has been working on learning contractions lately. She learns best with hands-on activities, so I knew we needed a fun activity to teach contractions.
To reinforce what she has been learning, I came up with this simple learning activity with plastic eggs.
We have used plastic eggs for so many learning activities over the years.
My son loved making plastic egg submarines, and this simple contractions activity helped my daughter quickly learn those tricky words.
Plastic Egg Activity to Teach Contractions
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Materials Needed:
- Plastic Eggs
- Black Permanent Marker
- Strips of Paper
To set up the activity, use a black permanent marker to write the two words that form a contraction on each of the plastic eggs. (You could also use masking tape on the eggs if you don’t want to write on them, but I have found hand sanitizer cleans the marker right off afterwards.)
Then cut strips of paper and write the matching contraction for each egg.
How to Teach Kids Contractions
We did several activities with our plastic eggs.
First, I had her read each plastic egg and then put the corresponding contraction inside the right egg. This helped reinforce what each contraction stands for.
The next time we played, the contractions were already tucked inside the eggs.
Again I had her read each egg. This time she guessed what the contraction would be aloud. Then she opened the egg to see if she was correct.
Then, she wrote the contraction down on her paper. This reinforced not only what the correct contractions were, but also helped her work on spelling them correctly.
Finally, I put all our eggs in a container.
When I called out a contraction, she had to choose the right egg. When she opened it up she found the strip of paper to check and see if she had chosen the right egg.
There are so many fun plastic egg activities for kids.
Using the eggs in this activity to teach contractions helped my daughter better understand what each contraction stood for.
You might also like:
- Adorable Sheep and Lamb Crafts
- 15 Fun Ways to Practice Sight Words at Home
- Using Legos to Teach Sentence Structure
Originally published on March 25, 2015.
