Tips For Combining Academics, Language & Fun!

In special education, we often have to teach the same skill over and over. To keep it fresh and engaging, we integrate props for upcoming holidays or themes. Here is a fun way to mix up instruction as we approach Easter.

This post contains affiliate links

I found a cool idea on Pinterest for creating a glow in the dark egg hunt. To begin, we needed to buy the supplies:

*Plastic eggs (buy extras- there are TONS of fun things to do with them!)

*Glow in the dark rings

The only prep that is needed is to put at least one ring in each plastic egg. You could also use glow in the dark bracelets if you do want to do rings. Just make sure you make the rings glow before you put them in the eggs.

Next, I hid the filled eggs around the classroom and turned off the lights. You may need to close the shades or blinds to get your room dark enough. When my class came back from lunch, they got to find an egg. You could have students find more than one egg or give them a color to find as the enter the room.

Add in language skills:

1. Have students describe where they found the egg using positional words. For example, “The egg was next to the pencil sharpener.”

2. Have one student hide the egg and then have to give directions to a peer to find the egg.

Add in math skills:

1. Add math skills in by graphing how many eggs each student found. Use the graph to practice making comparison statements and interpreting data on a graph.

2. Use different sized plastic eggs to hide the eggs. Have students sort the different sized eggs using math terms like big, medium, small, etc.

3. Sort eggs by color.

4. Have students look to find a specific plastic egg. For example, tell the student which color or size egg they have to find.

5. Write numbers in any form (numeral, tally marks, tens frame, etc.) and students have to find an egg that matches the number you assigned them.

Add in reading & writing skills:

1. Have students write about finding the egg and discovering what was inside.

2. Have students come up with sentences describing what was inside their egg. For this one, we first read this parts of speech interactive book about adjectives. This is a great activity to do as a predictable chart of shared writing.