St. Patrick's Day Activities

Practical Life:
Transferring rainbow colored wooden beads. Always a favorite of James'. In addition to all things green, I'm also going with a rainbow theme in these activities. Which is fun for James AND me because we are both nutty for rainbows (as you'll soon find out in an upcoming post!). :)

Tonging green and white flowers. These flowers are from a lei I cut up and James is using a strawberry huller to transfer them from one basket to another.

Pouring rainbow colored rice. This is the same rice we made during our Letter R week. Susan, from All About the Journey, has an excellent tutorial on how to make some of your own!

Tonging rainbow puffs. I made these puffs out of yarn (totally brought back memories of my sister and I doing the same thing in 1984). I was excited to see that James was interested in using the tongs! I've always set them out as an option and he'd usually chose to transfer with his fingers, which was fine with me, but today it was all about the tongs. Yay!

Spooning green and gold beads. These beads were cut from two of those Mardi Gras type necklaces. The clever Gaby from Little Fingers, Big Dreams shared this idea.

Sensory:
Our St. Patty's Day playdough and sensory tub is a family favorite. Peas everywhere. Good fun.

Sorting rainbow colored shapes by largest and smallest. In the Montessori world, shapes are classified as a sensory item (not Math as one would think). James really enjoys these - he linked them all together to make a chain and then went down the line naming each shape "big triangle, little triangle, big square..."

Math:
Counting shamrocks. I found these at the dollar store a while back. James is sooo into numbers, and since he's quantified numbers with some success before, I'm sure this will be a big hit. If not, ah well - I know for sure he'll love the shamrocks! :)

Similar activity only in this case the shamrocks sets are different from one another. The lovely tray and numbers come from Karen, a sweet bloggy friend who took the postcard exchange to a whole 'notha level by generously sending James loads of goodies from Puerto Rico!

Language:
Sadly, our library had only 1 St. Patrick's day book to check out - The Story of St. Patrick's Day, by Patricia A Pingry. It was pretty good and it even taught me a few things I didn't know. There's a book for every holiday in this series.

Art:
A shamrock sun catcher. How pretty are these?! Especially when the sun shines through them! They're easy peasy to create, too!
::Simply tape a long sheet of contact paper onto a table,
::Peel back the protective covering only halfway,
::Cut up different colored tissue paper into small squares,
::Sprinkle the squares all over the contact paper,
::Peel back the other half of the protective covering on the contact paper and fold it over onto the tissue paper side and smooth over,
::Use this template to cut shamrock shapes out of the contact paper.
You could punch a hole in the top and hang them with string or take the easier route (as I did) and just double stick tape them to the window. Mind, use a teeny tiny amount of tape so as not to leave tons of adhesive residue on your windows!

Music:
We've been listening to Celtic Dreamland from the Putamayo Kids series. If you're not familiar with this collection of CDs, I highly recommend them - we've enjoyed all four of the CDs we own.

Misc.:
Sorting shells. James l-o-v-e-s shells and was excited to see them so colorful! I bought a HUGE bag of these at our local thrift store for 50 cents. I would guess you could dye shells yourself with a bit of food coloring.

Dropping green, purple and gold coins into a jar. I have to say, I felt like a tough chick when I pulled out the screwdriver and hammer to poke holes into the lid of a pickle jar. ;) James has been playing with this activity every day. It's got it all - counting (coins), sorting (by color), sensory (sound of the coins dropping), fine motor (dropping the coins in and screwing/unscrewing the lid). The coins were from the dollar store and the pretty little rainbow pouch is a knitted mama made creation (did I tell you that I am a knitting fiend these days?!).

A green muffin tin meal! SO many options for this, but here's what I came up with:
::Avocado
::Spinach quesadillas
::Broccoli and green pepper (notice how the pepper slice looks like a shamrock?!)
::Gold and green goldfish crackers
::A pickle
::Kiwi
::Green milk (milk with a drop of green food coloring)

Other ideas off the top of my head:
Spinach pasta
Green beans
Peas
Salad
Jello
Mint chip ice cream
Asparagus
Pea pods
Split pea soup
Green olives
Cucumber
Green apple
Pear
And anything to which you can add green food coloring!

These activities will keep us busy for the next week and then it's on to Easter!! Yay!!

A gentle reminder:
The Moon Dog Farm giveaway ends tomorrow (Friday) night at midnight, so get your names in quick! And PLEASE be sure to enable or include your email address in your entry - several of you haven't and without them I won't be able to enter you into the contest. Random.org, who generates the random drawing of the winners, requires an email address to enter. Thanks!!

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