Metal Inset Easter Eggs

Hi Friends,

As I mentioned in my last post, the girls spent hours making Easter eggs using the oval metal inset.

They cut them out and decorated them (our 5-yo made these):

They taped them together and filled them with beans:

They made Jesus-themed eggs; they made stickered eggs (is it just me, or is anyone else bummed out that the Paas Easter egg dye kits don't include even a single cross?); they made eggs inspired by stained glass windows (our 6-yo made these):

My husband even got into it...

 ...and showed the girls how to use one oval metal inset to make a heart:

They collected them into Easter egg books...

They made so many eggs, I could never show them all here. I was very thankful that they were so busy and happy and focused in the weeks leading up to Easter. We hope you had a nice Easter, too!

Real Life Practical Life: Making Egg Salad

Hello Friends!

How are you? We are still here, still plugging along, still using the Montessori preschool curriculum with our two younger girls (now 5 and 2-3/4), and still looking for opportunities to incorporate Montessori into our day-to-day activities. We have a few Practical Life activities on the shelf, but for the most part, we focus on using our Practical Life skills in our everyday life to serve our family (and isn't that really the goal?). The two older girls (now 8-1/2 and 6-1/2) are learning to bake, do dishes, fold laundry...things that our homeschooling family truly, desperately needs (amen?).

In the weeks leading up to Easter (our family's favorite holiday), the girls used the oval metal inset to make dozens of Easter eggs (they were awesome -- I'm going to snap a pic of some and post them soon). They also dyed Easter eggs (32 of them, all of which I will be primarily responsible for eating!). Yesterday, after an Easter egg hunt to retrieve all of the dyed eggs, the girls spent a long time peeling and cutting eggs to make egg salad. All of them enjoyed peeling the eggs, but the two little girls spent a long time cutting them.

Cutting hard-boiled eggs is a wonderful activity for young children, because the eggs can easily be sliced with a butter knife or cheese knife:

(My wonderful husband originally got me this cheese knife for cutting hard cheeses, but we've found that it's much more effective for cutting things like hard-boiled eggs, bananas, strawberries, and soft cheeses.)

Cutting an egg in half lengthwise is relatively easy, but if your child struggles after that point because the egg rolls around, show him or her how to place the egg with its cut face down so that the egg will sit still.

The two little girls spent about an hour chopping eggs, an hour they no doubt would have spent getting into trouble--so not only did the egg salad get made, it kept their little hands from being idle. ;)

I'm going to be eating egg salad for a looooong time:

I hope you all are well, and (Lord willing, which He hasn't been for a while :) I hope that this will be the start of many more posts to come!