Sensory Play: Sound Eggs

Happy Birthday to TK!!!

Sensory Play: Sound Eggs
I've been wanting to make sound boxes for Sweet P for some time, but hadn't figured out what to use as the shaker. When I got out our Easter decor last week I had my answer!

I filled 12 eggs with various items and each sound egg had an matching egg so we had 6 pairs of sounds.
Here's what we had in our eggs:
  • black-eyed peas
  • jingle bells
  • 1 flat marble
  • regular marbles
  • a small egg
  • sparkly pompoms
I placed the eggs in a recycled egg carton with a little purple felt basket on her tray. After I explained the sound eggs and showed her how to listen to the sounds by holding one egg to her ear and trying the others until she found the match. She caught on and as she moved through the eggs I'd say "Does that one match?" And if it didn't I'd say, "Noooo. Let's try another one!" Once she started really listening for the differences I stopped talking.

When she thought she had a match, she'd open them up to check and then placed the matching pair in the basket. If it didn't match, she tried again. 

I also asked her "What do you think is in there?" before she opened the pairs to see if she could guess. She knew the jingle bells, but wasn't sure with the others. 

After she found each pair, she opened up each egg, dumped the contents into the egg carton, closed the carton and shook it up. It was fun to watch her reopen it and see that everything had gotten mixed up. It took her awhile and a little encouragement to finish, but she sorted and placed each item back into the eggs. She shook the carton again to listen to the sound all of the eggs made before putting her tray away. 

Sweet P was SO excited to show these to the Farmer and has played with them several times this week. Now that we've done it several times, she has gotten the hang of guessing which items are in the egg after she matches the sound. We also practiced hiding the eggs once for her, then she hid them for me!

 Montessori Monday