Still need a few fun ideas for St. Patrick's Day at school or home? Here are some wonderful crafts and ideas that my kiddos LOVED today. We will continue to explore rainbows all week because rainbows have been of high interest since our color study in the Fall :)
Can you tell we like rainbows?! What I especially love is how the kids work together to draw rainbows and work on color order using our fun rainbow song. They teach each-other all the time which is amazing to watch!
Idea 1: Kid-Created Rainbow Snack!
Here is the goal! Cute and super yummy! Fruit organized by color to look like a rainbow. We even added some (homemade) whipped cream for little clouds.
To Make:
Set out a bunch of fresh fruit for the kids to use to make their rainbow. We had:
RED-strawberries & raspberries
ORANGE-mandarin orange slices
YELLOW-banana slices and pineapple chunks
GREEN-kiwi and grapes
BLUE-blueberries
PURPLE-purple grapes
RED-strawberries & raspberries
ORANGE-mandarin orange slices
YELLOW-banana slices and pineapple chunks
GREEN-kiwi and grapes
BLUE-blueberries
PURPLE-purple grapes
Get in some fun fine-motor work and table manner practice by passing around the bowls of fruit with serving spoons. Let the kids choose their fruit and add it to their plates.
Healthy and delicious...and a great time to practice the colors/order of the rainbow!
Idea 2: DYI Shamrock Stamps
I usually have some craft-store corks around for various projects. They work great for making easy DIY shamrock stamps that the kids will enjoy using over and over!
For the stamp: I glued three corks together for one shamrock, and then four together for the other shamrock. After glueing on one last cork to the top (for them to hold on to) I tied a green bow for decoration!
For the stamp: I glued three corks together for one shamrock, and then four together for the other shamrock. After glueing on one last cork to the top (for them to hold on to) I tied a green bow for decoration!
We had three different shades of green to choose from:
-Glitter Green
-Metallic Green
-Emerald Green
The kids could dip the stamp or paint onto the stamp with a brush if they wanted multiple colors.
-Glitter Green
-Metallic Green
-Emerald Green
The kids could dip the stamp or paint onto the stamp with a brush if they wanted multiple colors.
Idea 3: DIY Leprechauns!
I saw these little wooden game pieces at Michael's Craft Store and knew I wanted to let the kids make little people of some kind. They were perfect for making Leprechauns for St. Patricks Day!
I tested out various markers and it turned out that our smelly markers didn't really bleed when the kids drew on the wooden pieces. Since they LOVE smelly markers, we went ahead and used them to draw hair, faces, and clothes :)
It was fun for the kids to get to take these home to play with!
Idea 4: DIY Gold Coins
Michael's Craft Store also sells wooden circles of various sizes. I grabbed a few packages of them in a size that matches the chocolate coins you see all over this time of year. The kids got to paint them and decorate the wooden circles into their very own gold coins!
Because we used paper plates (for the first time ever!) for our rainbow fruit snack, I had a few extra to use as easy-clean-up paint trays. The kids got metallic gold & sparkle gold paint, and some large gold glitter to use to decorate their coins!
Idea 5: Rainbow Telescopes & Coin Hunt!
While I was searching Pinterest for new St. Patrick's Day ideas I came across a post about a rainbow telescope. The preschoolers have been making telescopes for the last two weeks, on their own, out of our construction paper. They have used them for all sorts of things...and even taped them together into the longest telescope I have ever seen! It literally stretched from one end of our school to the other :) So, this idea was right up their alley. The only problem was that it was done with hot glue gun, in a small group (or even one on one) setting. I knew that wouldn't work for us. Keeping their attention while I glued them together would not work, and they wouldn't feel that involved. I spent some time thinking about how we could make rainbow telescopes independently that lasted longer than the ones made out of constrution paper -and came up with this fun idea!
Here we are all finished with our assembly! They turned out great :)
To Make:
Before school started I cut a bunch of adhesive (sticker-back) foam sheets into small sections. I also cut some thick white poster board and rolled them into tubes. I made sure the small foam sheets added up to the length of our tube!
We used this activity to work on the order of the colors in a rainbow :) The kids got to take each color, remove the sticker back, and attach it to their telescope tube. I always give the kids small tubs to put their sticker backs in to control the mess!
All my kids, age 3-5, were able to do this independently. At the "end" of the rainbow we put a gold sparkle sheet...for the gold that is always hiding at the end of a rainbow :)
Idea 6: Optional Extension Activity:
This sneaky leprechaun hid his gold coins around my preschool :) The kids got to use their new rainbow telescopes to search for them! Shhhh....I had secretly hid some chocolate coins around our school, in bins that had rainbow learning tools (like pattern blocks, counting bears, etc).
The kids had a fantastic time searching for the gold coins!
One awesome thing that comes from this kind of fun is spontaneous learning! Some of my kids sat down for table time and worked together to write the leprechaun a Thank You note :) They did all their own word blending and letter writing...and decided to do this all on their own!