Today I have a cost-efficient activity for all of you frugal moms who are gearing up for Easter and have one too many plastic eggs lying around.

The only materials you will need are the plastic eggs that break apart and a sharpie or other permanent marker. You can also use a dry-erase marker if you want to be able to change what you write on the eggs, but this wipes off easily when handling. If you don’t have any plastic eggs you can find them for super-cheap at The Dollar Tree, Walmart, and almost anywhere around Easter-time. But if I had to guess, some of you saved some eggs in an Easter box from last year because you didn’t want to throw them away.

Take those eggs and write a capital letter on the top half of the egg and a matching lower case letter on the bottom half of the egg. There are two games you can play with your little ones:

The first is to separate all the halves and mix them up and ask them to find the matching letters and connect the eggs.

The second is to fill the eggs with candy or objects around the house that start with that letter. For example, I put a candy egg in the letter “E” egg.

You can vary this activity in many ways to make it age-appropriate for your child: Casey shared the idea to place a letter on the top half of the egg, turn it and write another letter, turn it and write another letter.  Then, write a word ending at the bottom half to see how many words they can make  by turning the top half of the egg (c-at, b-at). Or, you can even write names on the egg and have your child write someone a tiny note and stick it inside of the egg to deliver it to them as an Easter surprise. Be creative and have fun!