Homeschool Preschool - St. Patrick's Day

Sticky Paper Rainbow

I did a similar activity for Honey Pot and Little M&M back in 2014, and they actually brought it up years later because they really loved doing it. St. Patrick's Day seemed like a fine time to offer it to Sweet E too! So I drew a rainbow outline on craft paper, covered it with a piece of contact paper (sticky side up), and supplied Sweet E with some snippets of colored paper. She loved it too!

Learning Notebook - Rainbow Writing

This is something her big brother and sister used to do in Kindergarten and 1st Grade with their sight words. We just did a couple shapes!

Learning Notebook - Fill in the Missing Color

Inspired by stayathomeactivitymom on Instagram, who created a larger version with paint. I wanted to keep it simple, and used markers instead!

Pot of Gold Addition

This free printable came from Kindergarten Smarts. Sweet E rolled the dice, put that many pieces of gold in each pot, added them up, and wrote the sum herself! She loved this game, and did it many, many times!

Alphabet Matching + Sensory Bin

I pulled out a cauldron from our Halloween supplies, and filled it with our rainbow rice. Then I put stickers on gold doubloons and hid them inside the rice. Sweet E had to dig for gold, then match up the upper and lowercase letters.

Leprechaun Vowel Sounds

I made this activity in Photoshop Elements, to help Sweet E differentiate between vowel sounds. She sometimes gets them confused when sounding out CVC words. She needed to pick up a shamrock, say the word pictured, and attach it to the appropriate leprechaun using our linking chains. This was initially challenging for her, but she got better and better as we went!

Sometimes we'd use the gold pieces to help us sound out the words.

St. Patrick's Day!

In our 3+ years of tot schooling, we have never done a St. Patrick's Day theme! It falls so close to Little M&M's birthday, that we usually just ignore it. This year we took a break from the party prep, and threw together a few impromptu activities and treats! Take a look.

Shamrock Lacing

I printed an image of a shamrock onto green cardstock, punched some holes around them (putting more in Honey Pot's than in Little M&M's) and provided each of the kids with a shoelace.

It's been a while since we've done lacing, and it was a nice diversion from the usual fine motor activities we do.

The first time through, I let Little M&M do it however he pleased. Then I asked if he wanted to see how I would do it, and we completed it together that way.

Honey Pot is familiar with the technique, and I kept hearing her say "up through this one, down through this one." She did a pretty great job, only skipping one hole accidentally.

Pot of Gold - Roll and Cover

This cute printable comes from totschooling. They provide files for both a one die and a two dice version. We stuck with one die so that Little M&M could participate fully. He really seems to be picking up on his numbers recently!

They took turns, rolling the die and covering each number with a golden coin that we had from Honey Pot's Peter Pan party. Super simple, and yet it is such a hit from start to finish.

Little M&M working hard on his one-to-one correspondence:

In the end, it came down to whom could roll a five first. It was fun competition for them!

Fruit Loop Rainbow Craft

I have been seeing Fruit Loops everywhere! We finally picked up a box and used it to make incredible rainbows. At first I was going to give them a template, but I didn't like any of them enough. So I simply drew a small arc for their bottom color, and we worked from there. Great color-sorting activity!

This craft is not for those with a short attention span. I was actually surprised with Little M&M's commitment to finishing!

And Honey Pot worked so diligently on her project!

We added some stretched and pulled cotton balls to the ends of the rainbows. Such a beautiful craft!

Green Foods

This was a lot of fun to put together for dinner tonight. I filled our plates with green foods that the kids would actually eat. Sadly, broccoli and peas are not favorites around here. Spinach, yes! But since we eat it multiple days a week, however, I omitted it today. We had:

- Honey dew

- Green grapes

- Sugar snap peas

- Chicken salad on veggie wraps

- Avocado hummus with tortilla chips

And for dessert, Shamrock Shakes! Oh, goodness. These were spectacular. The whole family slurped up these peppermint and vanilla ice cream treats so fast. Great end to our first St. Patrick's Day celebration!

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