Now that the ❤️️Valentine's Day is behind us, we are excitedly anticipating ☘️St. Patrick's Day. It is such an amazing themed holiday unit and a perfect transition from winter to spring!
We love decorating our learning space in a spirit of the holiday.
Below, you will find all activities we have done around St. Patrick's Day, summarized by the areas of study.
LANGUAGE
See here Books 📚 we are reading for☘️St. Patrick's Day.
We also read few legends about St. Patrick:
- St. Patrick and the Poison: some people say that a wizard tried to kill St. Patrick by putting poison in his drink. St. Patrick quickly turned it into ice and tossed it from the cup.
- St. Patrick & his Cloak: it is said that St. Patrick had a friend who borrowed St. Patrick's cloak. This friend was miraculously saved from the fire, without being hurt, by wearing St. Patrick's cloak.
- St. Patrick & a Shamrock: St. Patrick used a shamrock to explain to people about the Holy Trinity~one God in three divine beings: The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Growing at his feet was a shamrock, so he used this plant to explain three in one, one stem with three leaves.
- St. Patrick & the Fish: each year, on March 17th, fish rise from the sea. They pass before St. Patrick's alter in Ireland and then disappear back into the sea.
- St. Patrick & the Sunset: it is said that the sun did not set when St. Patrick died and that is shone in the sky for twelve days and nights.
St. Patrick's Day ~ How People Celebrate:
We learned that on St. Patrick's Day many people give cards or flowers to their family and friends. People also make cookies, cakes and other goodies to share with others. Some people wear green carnations or pin shamrocks to their clothing to celebrate the holiday. People dance Irish jigs and play games. Pipers and fiddlers play Irish tunes. There are green hats everywhere, people are wearing green costumes, green banners are hung on windows ... there is a lot of green - everywhere! People also decorate their houses with shamrocks, a plant with three leaves, looking like a clover. Shamrock ☘️ is a symbol of Saint Patrick as well as of Ireland.
See here 🌈Rainbow Alphabet 🔡Lower to 🔠Upper Case Matching.
MATH
Color a paper plate, making a rainbow pattern, then cut in half. Roll the 🎲 dice, make a 🔢number from pipe cleaners and fill the pot with 💰gold (we are using these gold coins)! And we love these solid 🎨 tempera paint sticks! They dry in ⏳90 seconds and are great even for smallest 🙌🏻hands.
See here DIY ☘️Shamrock Addition 🔢Counting Activity.
Taking it up a 📈notch by adding three addends 6+2+4 (instead of two in a regular equation) since a ☘️shamrock has three leaves! This simple math addition DIY is super easy to set up: all you need is a 🍀paper puncher and pipe cleaners to make numbers to reinforce 🔢number recognition and proper tracing. Buy a similar shamrock here (same size as we are using ~ 1") or buy a smaller 5/8" clover puncher here.
See here ☘️ Inspired Four-Leafed Lucky Clover 🍀Montessori 💯 Hundred Board.
See here ☘️Shamrock ✂️DIY ♻️Recycled 🍡Popsicle Puzzle Skip Counting by 🔟s.
PRACTICAL LIFE
Transfering is a basic Montessori Practical Life activity. Present to a smaller child in a shallow bowl and offer to transfer using hands. You can modify, according to your child's level, and offer different transferring tools: from a spoon to tongs to even chopsticks! (See more on transferring here 🍁Fall 👻Halloween Inspired Tongs Transferring).
These mini tongs are perfect for little hands to exercise fine motor control and all the green color makes the activity inviting and fun! We are using a green silicone mold (you can also use an ice tray) and styrofoam covered balls (buy gold ones here) ~ you may also use pom poms. Have fun transferring!
See here ☘️Shamrock Pipe Cleaner Beads Fine Motor Craft.
Our ☘️Shamrock Pipe Cleaner Beads Craft is decorating our window.
SENSORIAL
Preparing our 🎩 Leprechaun ☘️Land. I think that 🌀hydrogels~ 💦water-beads are the most amazing sensorial experience🙌🏻 At times, I'm not sure 🙈whom am I setting up these bins for? 👧🏻👦🏼or 🙋🏼? Hydrogels can be costly though, so I bought ⚪️clear hydrogels in bulk ~ 1 lb makes 12 gallons😱for only $10~ and then added food coloring! And, the amazing thing is that once colored, the hydrogels do not stain hands or transfer color! For example, we placed DIY blue hydrogels in water, and the water remained clear while hydrogels remained vivid blue!
Inspired by the 💚Green book, we are making shades of GREEN today with this DIY rice! Just add a little bit vinegar (we are using a bulb baster for that) and desired food coloring to your dry rice (separate each color in an individual plastic ziplock bag) - mix well, air dry and it is ready to use! Most coloring we used (such as green, seafoam, and turquoise) are from this liquid dye set for soap. We also used a neon green (with a pointy cap) from this food coloring pack, and last one: kiwi green was from this liquid soap set.
Did you know that 🇮🇪 Ireland's nickname is 💚 'Emerald Isle’ because of its verdant landscapes and lush 🌱 grass? Also, the color 💚green holds a deeper religious meaning of Catholicism. Green stands for fighting for independence and freedom from 🇬🇧England and to be able to exercise free religious choice. Gold, on the other hand, as seen on the 🇮🇪Irish flag, represents Protestant ruling under the 🇬🇧British Empire, and white stands for hope.
⁉️Did you know that the original color associated with St. Patrick was not green, but blue! Patrick is shown wearing blue vestments in several artworks. It was not until later that the green color became associated with Ireland due to the beautiful green countryside and the above mentioned religious content.
See here 🎩Leprechaun 🍀Land DIY 🌀Hydro-Gels 💚Colored Rice 🙌🏻 Sensory Bin.
🌈Rainbow 🔢Math Color Matching Activity
This 🔢math 🎨sensorial 🌈color matching activity offers a child to practice 🔢numbers recognition and sequencing, numeral to quantity association and color matching. Offer a child to place on the 🌈 rainbow's color-rays the exact amount of matching color dot stickers: 1 🔴, 2 🍊🍊, 3 🍋🍋🍋 and so forth! (We are using these amazing Prismacolors pastels.)
See here 💛💙❤️Primary Colors, 💦Water & Paper Capillary Action ⌛️Timelapse ⚗️ Kids Science Experiment (🌈 Rainbow Walking Water).
See here 🖌Markers ☕Coffee Filters 🌈Rainbow Walking 💦Water ⌛️Timelapse Kids ⚗️Science Capillary Action.
Read here "How NOT to Catch a Leprechaun" with St. Patrick's☘️ Glittery Play Dough & 🔤 Alphabet Beaded Pipe-cleaner 🌈 Rainbow.
Leprechauns are imaginary figures from Irish folklore, the size of a thumb, mischievous but hard-working, earning their gold by making shoes for fairies. Leprechauns like nuts and dandelion tea. They live long lives ~ two hundred years is not even considered of age. And, you can only catch a Leprechaun if you happen to have in a possession a very hard to find the lucky four-leafed clover. If caught, a Leprechaun must grant you three wishes, and he might even reveal where does he hide his gold at the end of the 🌈 rainbow.
Some 🌈rainbow activities below:
See here how we made No-Cook Homemade 🌈Rainbow Play Dough.
See here ☘️St. Patrick's Day 🌈Rainbows from Montessori Color Boxes & Knobless Cylinders.
ARTS / CRAFTS
See here ☘️Shamrock✂️DIY♻️Recycled 🚽Toilet Paper Roll 💚Craft.
♻️Recycled🍾Cork ☘️Shamrock 🎨Stamping Art/Craft.
The next time you will be having 🍾champagne, save the ♻️corks and make 👆🏻this ☘️Shamrock craft! Just tie three corks with a green pipe cleaner to represent the leaves of a Shamrock. Then dip your "Shamrock stamp" into the green washable paint and apply to the paper. We used this tempera paint to draw a stem.
See here St. Patrick's Day Inspired Laminated☘️ Shamrock Puppet Craft.
Happy☘️St. Patrick's Day!
Below, I will show you a sneak peek into our ☘️St. Patrick's inspired learning space, as well as what was on our shelves when Adrian was three-years-old.
Buy a Shamrock garland here, St Patrick's Day Shamrocks foil swirls here, and Shamrock wall/window decorations here.
Here, we have been using St. Patrick's Day symbols instead of spindles for a Traditional Montessori Math Activity "Spindle Box" (read here). We also made 🌈 rainbows from Montessori Color tablets (see here), and Adrian reproduced a 🍀 Lucky Four-Leafed Clover pattern on a Montessori 💯 Hundred Board (see here).
On the left material for ☘️Shamrock✂️DIY♻️Recycled 🚽Toilet Paper Roll 💚Craft (see here.) In the middle is our favorite at the moment My First Book 📘 of Baby 🐥 Animals (read a post here). And we used Montessori Knobless Cylinders to make rainbows (see here).
Children love pipe-cleaner beading activities! (See here ☘️Shamrock Pipe Cleaner Beads Fine Motor Craft). We also used golden coins as counters while learning numbers. (Adrian would "trace" each number with a green dot sticker first.) See a similar activity with counters here.
I would love to know which activity was your favorite during this holiday!
Happy ☘️ St. Patrick's Day!
And, by the way, a Leprechaun ended up visiting us for a quick bite after all.
Children were super 😜 excited to see that he ate all the nuts we left out for him and drank some of his favorite ❤️️dandelion 🍵tea ...
Though spilling most of the tea ...
He also left gold dusted 👣 footprints all over and two gold coins. We did not catch him on camera though 😬 leprechauns are quick, shrewd and camera-shy❌📸.
Have you been 🍀 lucky catching a Leprechaun? Have any of your "perfect" traps worked? Leave a comment! I love hearing from you.
For more details on what we did when Adrian was three years old, read here St. Patrick's Day ☘️2017 Inspired Learning Space, What is on our shelves, Activities roundup.