Preschooler Activities for St. Patrick's Day

Today is my little boy's FIFTH birthday. I can't believe it. Especially since I revisited some of these older posts from when my two oldest were just three and one. It really does sail by.

Leprechaun Hats:

 We are studying the letter H right now so we made these hats which work well for St. Patty's day too! Step by step instructions found over at the East Coast Mommy Blog. They were quick and easy to make and then they spent a good half hour decorating them with stickers.

We made a mess. We are SO good at that.

Just as I was about to take this picture Edison whips around with these scissors, opening and closing them as fast as he can. Stinker.

(Our Family Systems poster is explained HERE)

Shamrock Search

 We did a hunt for the letter H on these shamrocks and they wanted to do it over and over again. I had them put buttons on different letters (after we did the H) and then we would clear the board and go again!

When we were bored with the letters we moved onto SHAPES and then NUMBERS.

The possibilities are endless. And now, I will be following the lead of my little five year old today. FIVE. Happy Pi Day!

Here is a blast from the past and some fun ideas for St. Patrick's Day this week:

Shamrock Memory Game & Crafty Rainbows

Rainbow Cupcakes

Fun St. Patrick's Day Facts

Toddler Activities for St. Patrick's Day: Last minute St. Patty's

I feel like I have these posts for every holiday...last minute activities! That's how we do here in the Phipps household. So here they are:

The Origin of St. Patrick's Day
(Tweak it as you will, of course)
St. Patrick's Day is a holiday where we celebrate a man named St. Patrick from a country called Ireland. He was a good man and wanted to teach other people in Ireland about his beliefs. He used a shamrock, or a green clover, to teach others about the trinity (God, Jesus, and the Holy Ghost). He died on March 17th, 461 A.D. which is why we celebrate St. Patrick's Day by wearing green, decorating with shamrocks, and looking for little Irish leprechauns searching for their pots of gold!

Shamrock Memory Game

We've been playing a lot of "memory" in our house lately and I thought I'd add a fun St. Patty's day twist to it.

1. Cut out twenty shamrocks, using this tutorial, and write the numbers 1-10 on the backs, twice. Two number 1's, 2's, 3's, etc. We put green smiley face stickers on the opposite side.

Our CUTE little neighbor came over just in time to play with us.

Mix them up and lay them out in rows.

As we're playing, I try to stop after someone's turn and repeat what we just saw, "Remember, this one's a four, and this one is a six. Remember where they are!"


Crafty Rainbows

I saw this next idea on No Time for Flashcards and thought we'd give it a try.

1. Gather all your scraps from your activity time closet: construction paper strips/leftovers, random beads, buttons, pom-poms, stickers. We even had a handful of balloons in there.

2. Place all of your scraps into one large bowl and have your preschooler sort them by color into smaller bowls. (This should keep them busy for a while.)

3. Once they've sorted, you can use white poster board or a flattened paper bag for your rainbow. I let my daughter draw her own rainbow, telling her the order of the colors (remember ROYGBIV?). Then we placed a line of glue on each color for her to paste her scraps.






Unfortunately, I don't have a finished product yet. We're still finishing our rainbow.

Tomorrow we're having a St. Patrick's Day party with some friends and I'll be cooking up some of this:

(I thought these would be fun to have on their plates)
Martha Stewart

and of course...
Martha Stewart
(Mine won't look quite this good)
P.S. Did you read this article about the origin of corned beef and cabbage?

and for dessert...
Family Fun
Yum. I'm actually not a jello fan, but my girls are REALLY excited for this.

Toddler Activities for St. Patrick's Day: Rainbows and Cupcakes

I'm always a little leery about baking with my kids...you just never know what your kitchen will look like when you're done or how much flour and eggs your kids will consume. But when I found this recipe from Family Fun, I decided to be brave and attempt to make these babies...from scratch. I actually never planned on making them from scratch, but when I was finally ready to roll up my sleeves I realized that I didn't have any cake mix. It was a BIG undertaking but if you have an entire afternoon to kill, I highly recommend this activity. There's something about having your kids help you measure the flour and crack the eggs that feels so "motherly." We made a mess and had a good time.

I used the yellow cake recipe in my Better Homes and Gardens Cook Book.

Ingredients:
3/4 c butter, softened
3 eggs
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
2 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 3/4 cups sugar
1 1/2 tsp vanilla
1 1/4 cups milk
*Click here for baking instructions.

I had to take some shots of my cute girls in their lil' aprons. I remember buying the white one (now paint-stained) when I was pregnant with my first daughter. I couldn't imagine having a little one big enough to fit into it. How time flies.

Hazel says, "I am smiling mom, see?"

Yes, I let my three year old use the beater on her own and she rocked it.

After a little taste test, we got out the food coloring!
We divided our batter into six bowls and mixed the colors, following the guide here.

We spooned the six layers into our cupcake pan and popped them into the oven. I filled our larger pan while my three year old filled the smaller one. Even though her layers weren't perfect, it didn't matter because they still made a rainbow! (My two year old lost interest after she consumed way too much batter...)




And here they are...

Any fun St. Patrick's Day traditions out there?

Toddler Activities for St. Patrick's Day: Glad you're here, March

5 Fun facts about March:

sevenof
1. It is Women's History month. (That would be a fun activity: a simplified "guess who" game?)
2. St. Patricks Day is on the 17thMartha Stewart3. March 20th is the beginning of Spring.
4. The name "March" comes from the Roman word "Martius" and it was originally the first month of the Roman calendar. It's named after Mars, the god of war. (It became the 3rd month in 1752, if you wanted to know.)Wisdom of Astrology
5. The flower most associated with March is the narcissus (wild daffodil).

Ecclectic Revisited
And I love this poem...
DaffodilsWilliam Wordsworth

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed--and gazed--but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.

St Patty's Activities for Toddler/Preschooler

I'm back! Hope you all had a nice Valentine's Day and are ready to pull out the green.
I'm working on a short little script to help explain the origin of St. Patrick's day in a way that a child could understand (I have to admit that I didn't know the story! It's pretty neat.)
For now, we're filling our house with shamrocks.

Step One: Fold your paper in half lengthwise.


Step Two: Fold it in half again, the other way.



Step Three: Line up the two folded edges, making a triangle.



Step Four: Cut along the folded edges, starting at about 1 1/2 inches from the bottom and make the leaf shape.



We went ahead and made our shamrocks into a crown because that's what we girls do.
We made jumbo size ones and smaller ones, some with glitter and decoration, some with puff balls in the center...you get the idea. Be creative.



Today I decided to put our shamrocks to use in a colors and numbers game, since that's what I'm focusing on with my two girls.

COLORS:
I cut out shamrocks in a variety of colors and taped them all over my body (I highly recommend getting dressed for the day before you do this; you'll feel better about yourself). I asked my two year old to find the yellow shamrocks, then the red, etc. She thought I looked pretty silly, but it was a fun way to review our colors!

My three year old insisted on helping, so next we taped the shamrocks all over her body, and did it again. This works out really well if you have an older sibling that wants to help and ends up shouting out the answers before the younger one can even think about it.
Get them involved in the teaching! (Hazel would still sneak her finger onto the right color and tap the shamrock until Charlotte caught on and pulled it off proudly.)

Hazel insisted on having the shamrocks on her face...
And she definitely dressed herself this morning.


NUMBERS:
For my preschooler, I wrote the numbers 1-10 onto the shamrocks and taped them onto my toddler! She had to find them in order and tape them onto the floor in a straight line.






Then I asked her to write the numbers on her own, in order,
referring back to the shamrocks for help.

We had a lot of fun with this one and I hope you do too!