Preschool Lessons About Eggs & Chickens

Preschool lessons on chickens and eggs will be entertaining for the children and are appropriate for a variety of units. Lessons can include seasonal subjects such as chicks hatching in the spring or studying farms and the harvest in the fall. Be sure to keep the lessons short and interactive because young children tend to have short attention spans.

Start the lesson by asking the children about eggs, such as if they like eating them, where eggs come from, how they hatch and what we use eggs for. Show a picture of a hen sitting on a nest of eggs and ask the children to draw their own version. Spell out the word "egg," teaching the children about the letters. Or draw pictures of a plate with cooked eggs on it. If it is close to Easter, have the children decorate Easter eggs, or arrange an Easter egg hunt for the children.

Have the children make a bird's nest out of an unbleached coffee filter. They can simply glue Easter grass into the coffee filter to create a nest shape. They can then add candy eggs or toy eggs to complete the look. You can also give the children plastic Easter eggs that separate in two, they can draw a small chick, or anything else they want to "hatch," and place it inside the egg.

Introduce the lesson by asking the children what they know about chickens. Talk about where they live, what they eat, and how they have feathers. Write out the word "chicken" and see how many letters the children can identify. Read a book such as "The Little Red Hen" and end the lesson with a fun, active activity, such as all the children walking around and clucking like chickens or learning the Chicken Dance.

Make a chicken picture using a variety of shapes. First, have all the shapes separate and see if the children can identify one large and one small oval, two stars, one triangle and two large and one small heart shape cut out of construction paper. Glue the large oval for the body of the chicken and a small oval for the head onto another piece of paper. Add the hearts upside down for the wings, the stars for the feet, tucking a couple of the star points under the body. Add the small heart for the comb and the triangle for a beak. Finish by gluing on googly eyes or drawing them on.