Top o’ the mornin’ to ya and your wee lads and lasses too! Even though St. Patrick’s Day was on Wednesday and I usually do holiday plans with my littles a week early so they’re in your hands for the actual holiday, I got my dates confused (I THOUGHT St. Patty’s was on the 17th!) so here we are! I’m pretty sure your littles won’t notice if you still do St. Patrick’s Day themed activities after St. Patty’s Day if they’re under the age of 3- and even if they do notice, I’m certain they’ll still have fun doing them! If you would like, you could always take this week off for Spring Break! (We’re skipping Spring Break because 1) we’re not going anywhere and 2) we take every Friday off so we get plenty of down time on a weekly basis!) In any case, I’m still posting these plans for future reference- and I promise the Easter plans will be on time!
–Leprechaun hunt: Each year for St. Patrick’s Day I…I MEAN the leprechauns…throw gold coins and shamrock necklaces all over our lawn. Then I have my littles hunt through the lawn for leprechauns and find all the gold and treasure (which can be purchased at The Dollar Tree each year around St. Patty’s Day) and collect it into their little cauldrons (or pots). We usually do this with all of their little friends and make it a party with green smoothies and crafts too, but this year it was just us due to Covid- NEXT year hopefully we’ll be able to have everyone over again! We missed them!
–Green hunt: St. Patrick’s Day is a great holiday to focus on learning the color green- you can have your little wear green of course, but going on a “green hunt” for green household items is fun too! I had my littles find 10 green things around the house and put them in a “leprechaun pile”. As they added to the pile, we counted to see how many we had found until we found 10.
–Pot of gold name craft: I cut out a cauldron for each of my littles along with yellow circles- one for each letter in their name. I wrote the letters in the circles then had them glue them in the correct order at the top of their pot. (My preschooler did this unassisted, I guided my toddler by spreading out the letters then asking him if he could find each one in turn, then showing him where to glue it.) As a final touch, I let them decorate the pots with St. Patrick’s Day stickers. I got my inspiration from a Teachers Pay Teachers St. Patrick’s Day bundle posted on Pinterest.
–Shamrock dot painting: I used ticky tack to attach a few shamrock cut outs to a piece of cardstock. Then I had my littles use a shimmery gold and green do-a-dot marker to put dots all around the shamrocks on the page. When they were finished, we took off the shamrocks and their image was left behind in the midst of the dots! Just like leprechaun magic! I got this idea from A Dab of Glue Will Do!
–Pot of gold dot art: Give your little a black cauldron cut out, a green rectangle (for grass) and a piece of light blue (or white) construction paper. Have them use glue to attach the grass and pot to the bottom of the blue paper. Then give them a shimmery bingo dobber to fill the pot with gold!
–Pipe cleaner rainbow craft: Give your little a block of florist foam (darker green would’ve been prettier but I thought this kind was softer and easier to poke pipe cleaners into) and red, orange, yellow, green, blue and purple pipe cleaners. Then show them how to stick the pipe cleaners in the foam to make an arch. Have them do this with each color, then add torn up cotton balls to the bottom with glue to make clouds. I got this idea from Made With Happy.
–Rainbow magic milk: My kids love playing with “magic milk”, so when I saw a St. Patrick’s Day rainbow version on Growing a Jeweled Rose I knew it was something we had to do! You just fill a baking pan with milk (we used soy milk and it was fine), then give your little red, yellow and blue containers of water mixed with food coloring. Have them drop the colors into the milk with a pipette and swirl them to make all the colors of the rainbow! Then, give them a small container of dish soap with some Q-tips and have them dip them in the colors to watch them magically disappear or swirl! If you talk to your child as they play, this is a great way to get some color recognition practice in too! (ie. Look! You dropped yellow on top of the blue and you made GREEN! Wow!!!”)
–Leprechaun hand print art: Paint the palm of your little’s hand a skin color and their fingers orange for a beard then make a print on cardstock. When it’s dry, add a green hat and a face and you have a leprechaun! I got this idea from Pinterest.
–P is for pot of gold: I made this “P” practice page by drawing a large P surrounded by some smaller letters (including lots of Ps) then had my little make a P by dotting it with a green do-a-dot marker. Then I had him dot the other Ps he found on the page. You could also do L is for leprechaun or S is for St. Patrick’s Day!
–St. Patrick’s Day counting book: I made a small St. Patty’s Day counting book by stapling together 2 half sheets of paper folded in half. I wrote a number on each page, pointed out the number to my little and told him it’s name, then helped him count that amount of shamrock stickers as he put them on the page.
–Irish step dancing: Dance is a fun way to introduce other cultures to your young children so this week we watched some of “Riverdance” on YouTube then I encouraged my littles to get up and try it themselves!
–Supply/shopping list:
- pipe cleaners (red, orange, yellow, green, blue purple)
- cotton balls
- a block of floral foam
- chocolate coins
- plastic coins
- cake pan
- milk
- food coloring
- small cups
- pipette
- dish soap
- Q-tip
- shamrock stickers
littlelovesandlearning.com 
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