Egg Cup for infants....and up!

The egg and egg cup is an infant montessori activity that I really love! The goal of this "work" is for the infant to:
1) Explore the shapes, weight, texture, size, and temperature of both the egg and the egg cup (most likely with mouth first and then fingers secondary).

2) Gradually learn that the egg fits INTO the cup. To foster this, demonstrate for the baby repeatidly over the course of many weeks. When you place the egg in the cup say, "in!" and when you take it out, say, "out!" You can remove the eggs different ways--grabbing it and just taking it out, turning it upside down to pour it out, etc.

3) Master taking the egg out of the cup independently

4) Putting the egg in the cup independently

I recommend finding a nice small tray (or plate or some tray-like object) to store the egg and egg cup upon in a place the baby can access it.

I bought this wooden egg cup at Hobby Lobby this week--It was around $1.00. Now is the time to buy one, as they are VERY hard to find after the Easter season. For infants I would use a smooth wooden egg that fits in the cup (can also be purchased at Hobby Lobby or Michaels.)

My toddler just enjoys playing with the egg cup and carrying her paper mache eggs around in it--which is a great hand-eye coordination and balance exercise!

PS) I took the photo of the wooden egg cup next to all my ceramic easter decorations just for the photo to be pretty. Obviously all you'd provide access to for an infant/toddler is the wooden egg cup and egg. The others are just for "pretty." Hope that doesn't confuse!