Multiplication Egg Hunt for Easter

Last year one of my third grade teaching partners had a great idea for a fun way to practice multiplication facts! We had an multiplication egg hunt where students matched eggs based on different multiplication facts. It was one of those activities that had students laughing and smiling ear-to-ear, and I absolutely plan to do it again this year.

We first bought cheap plastic eggs. We got ours from Amazon, Walmart and the Dollar Store, and we’ll be able to reuse many of our eggs from last year. We bought enough so that there were at least four eggs for every student. Of course, during the egg hunt some found more and some found less.

We split apart all of the eggs and sorted them into two groups.

On the larger side of each egg, we wrote a multiplication problem (this could easily work for addition, subtraction, or division facts). Then on the smaller side of each egg, we wrote the product of each multiplication problem. We intentionally mixed colors to keep things interesting. We stored each side of the eggs in a different bag. It is important not to let the sides of the eggs get mixed together.

On the day of the egg hunt, we hid the side of the eggs with the product written on it all over the playground. {Actually, since we had about 400 eggs, we didn’t technically hide them-it was more or less throwing them on the ground.} Before allowing students to start, we went over the ground rules of where they could and could not go. We let homerooms compete against each other, which helped keep things simple. Each teacher gave their students a multiplication fact egg, students had to find the correct matching product side of the egg. When they found the match, they showed it to their teacher to verify that it was correct. If it was indeed a match, the egg was placed in that homeroom’s bag or basket, and the student got another multiplication fact egg. We did this until all of the eggs were found. It was a HUGE success, but I did learn a few things from trial and error.

• Make sure you hide ALL the eggs. I accidentally forgot about a bag of eggs and left the eggs in my classroom! Some students were looking for numbers that weren’t there!
• Many students wanted to gather and hold dozens of product eggs, while looking for a match. This year, students will only be able to hold one part of an egg at a time. This will keep it a little more fair, because some students couldn’t find what they needed, because other students were holding the eggs.
• Write a line underneath the number 18 and 81, so that students will know which is which.

While I recognize that this isn’t the most rigorous and standards-based activities, I do strongly believe that is is an activity that students won’t forget, and that’s important too! Do you have any other ideas of fun things to do with easter eggs? I’d love to hear them!