Sensory Easter eggs

Everyday life is experienced through our senses. Children learn through seeing, hearing, touching, smelling and tasting. These Sensory Eggs let kids explore their senses, with the exception of the sense of taste. We don’t encourage eating plastic Easter eggs!

Setup

Collect plastic Easter eggs with holes in the bottom—we used these so we could smell a few of the items that we planned to put inside.

Fill some eggs with coffee beans, whole cloves, broken pieces of cinnamon sticks or other fragrant fillers. These eggs have no texture on the outside, so we would remember which eggs smelled and which did not. A dab of hot glue between the egg halves will secure it so nothing falls out.

Fill other eggs with popcorn kernels, rice, a rock, a penny, rubber bands or other small objects that will create different sounds when the eggs are shaken.

Decorate other eggs with yarn, twine, glittered ribbon, satin ribbon, buttons, non-skid foam, cotton batting, felt or other textured materials. We applied the materials to the eggs with hot glue and a chopstick to push the items into place on the egg.

Sensory activities

Challenge your children to smell, shake and feel the eggs, describing the eggs using sensory language. Do they smell sweet or spicy? Do they eggs make a clunking noise, or do they rattle? Are they rough or smooth? Young kids will enjoy simply feeling the different textures, while older kids will be able to use descriptive language to talk about the textures they are feeling, the different sounds they hear.

Although this would be a fun activity to do with very young kids, if your child still puts items into their mouth then this is not an age-appropriate activity. Have fun exploring the sounds, textures, smells and visual appearance of these Sensory Eggs!