ST. PATRICK'S DAY

Below are some St. Patrick's Day activities and ideas. Enjoy!!!

Art Activities

Encourage the children to make a collage entirely of green things. Provide magazines, paints, markers, and construction paper. Explain how the color green is usually associated with St. Patrick's Day.
Make rubbings of shamrock shapes. Provide the children with cardboard shamrock shapes, paper and crayons. Place paper over the shape and have them rub over the outline with the crayon. Explain how the shamrock is a good luck symbol connected with St. Patrick's Day.
Make a March flyer. Provide the children with a paper plate, yarn, and streamers. Have the children punch four holes around the plate. Tie yarn around holes, then bundle the four pieces into one at the bottom, to make one string to hold. Have the children add streamers around the plate. Fly the flyers out in the wind!
Provide the children with blue and yellow fingerpaint. Assist them in discovering how to make green.
Provide a white shamrock shape and have the children paint it green and add green glitter.
Make Play Clay (in art recipes sections) and have the children roll the dough and cut out a shamrock using a cookie cutter. Add a hole at the top, using a straw. When it dries, have the children paint it green, add a piece of ribbon or yarn and you have a necklace.
Provide the children with a black cutout of a pot and several yellow circles. Have the children glue the "coins" into the pot for a pot of gold. Explain the story of the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow and the leprechaun.

Cognitive Activities

Have the children find green in any of their clothing or in the classroom.
Have the children sequence leprechaun shapes by size.
Provide a laminated black pot and several yellow paper coins. Have the children place the coins on the pot and count them as they go!
Provide each child with several shamrock cut outs that are all the same size and a long strip of adding machine tape. Measure the tape to the height of the child. Then the student glues the shamrock cut outs on the tape and measure how many shamrocks tall they are!
Thanks to The Haugens
Provide several cutouts of shamrocks of various shapes and sizes and have them sort by size and color.

Dramatic Play Activities

Fine Motor Activities

Encourage the children to make shamrocks out of green pipe cleaners.
Make paper airplanes to see which flies farthest.
Have the children make their own rainbows by cutting construction paper or cellophane paper in red, yellow, blue, green, orange, and purple. Paste on paper.

Gross Motor Activities

Dance an Irish jig!
Have a treasure hunt. Place shamrock stickers on several items in the room and have the children find the marked items.
Tape a rainbow to the floor and have the children run to it, skip on it, hop around it, crawl on it, etc.

Group Activities

Cut a large pot out of paper and tape it to the front of a box. Give each child 5 bean bags with a gold sticker on them. Have the children count how many "coins" they can get into the "pot".
Play Hot Potato!
Ask the children what they would wish for if a leprechaun granted them three wishes. Place their responses on green paper shamrocks.
Pretend a leprechaun has visited the room. Place a green hat on the floor and tape some small green footprint shapes all around the room. Sprinkle a small amount of glitter on the floor and some small round coins cut from yellow paper. Write each child's name on a coin, punch a hole through the top and string green yarn through to make a necklace. Hide the necklaces throughout the room and when the children come into the room, tell them a visitor came while they were gone. Have them search for the coin necklaces that the leprechaun left them!

Science Activities

Have prisms available for the children to look at. Assist them in holding them so the light shines through to produce a rainbow. Ask them what colors they see.
Examine a potato with eyes growing on it with a magnifying glass.
Use a scale to weigh potatoes. Which are heavier, which are lighter?
If possible, find real four leaf clovers growing outside. How many leaves do they have? Examine with magnifying glasses.
Mix together mint ice cream and milk to make St. Patty's Day shakes. Discuss what happens to the mixture. What made the ice cream melt? What is ice cream made of?
Thanks to the Haugens
Have one container of water with yellow food coloring in it and another with blue food coloring. Encourage the chilren to mix the two and explain what happens.

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chalkboard1488@yahoo.com1997