Spring Science, Spelling, and Syllables

I may have said "Spring science, spelling and syllables" but these are more Easter-ish if I'm being technical. I was going for some alliteration in the title there. Easter is in spring so that totally works, right? 

I love that my son is getting old enough to try out all of my activities. He LOVES science experiments so I was super pumped to show him this little classic. I made this years ago (although it didn't have the cute clip art until just a couple years ago). I took the classic egg floating experiment and attempted to make it work a little better using the scientific method. First, we ask our question. Here, you see Shawn making his hypothesis. He thinks two different things will make the egg float.

He was so jazzed about using random things like honey and soda for this one! We carefully dropped eggs into the cups using spoons. We learned that the salt water makes the egg float. (TIP: add tons of salt to the salt cup.) In the picture below, he is drawing the egg in the observation section to show which egg floats.

 Last, he wrote his conclusion:

I know what I'm going to be doing more of this spring break! Any good ideas for experiments at home are welcome. :)

This is a fun way to practice sounding out words. I've made several of these for each season of the year. I recently blogged about a groundhog version. Here, students use the bunny to "hop" through the word. For some reason, having these props makes spelling and reading a lot more fun!

Here is another way to sound out words. Place the eggs in the basket to make words. I made short vowels and vowel teams for this one. (FYI: I used the cheapest print settings to save my ink so that is why the picture looks so dull. It is much brighter than this if you use a normal print setting.)

One of my favorite things to do is teach kids about syllables.  I've found it really helps my struggling readers and spellers, but it is good practice for all kids. These are all open syllables. This activity will help them remember that with open syllables, the vowel is going to be a long vowel.

 

You can find all of these activities in my Easter pack:

There are tons of "ready to go" printables in this pack as well:

Click HERE to get to these activities.

Last year, I shared this little inference freebie:

Click on the picture to download.

Students read the clues and make an inference about what is in each egg.

Use at home or at school!