Do you celebrate St Patricks day or is it just another holiday you would rather skip? I love the aspects of it such as green color , pot of gold and rainbows. Because of that reason we try to squeeze in some of those in our daily learning activities.
Here’s a collection of simple learning ideas for toddlers or young preschoolers that could be set up easily with minimal items!
1. Sticky wall mural
A great fine motor practice for toddlers and preschoolers. Do you know that working on vertical surface improve bilateral coordination and support midline crossing. Both are essential body awareness skills for kids.
Tape down a large contact paper with sticky side up on the wall. Offer them an assortment of foam clover shapes, pom poms and coins and let them create their own pattern on the wall. For young toddlers touching the sticky side could be a sensory experience too!
2. Coin shapes
Learn shapes and practice fine motor skills using these gold coins from Dollar tree and a green floral tape. Stick down the tape on a table and let them trace the shapes using gold coin. Learning opportunities include fine motor skills, shapes, counting and hand eye coordination.
Once the coins are on the shapes count them out together and discuss which shape has more or less coins on it. You could also ask them to put the coin at the ends and count them to find the vertices for each shape.
3. Pasta Threading
Dye some penne pasta using Green & yellow food coloring. Follow this link to know how to dye pasta. Use a styrofoam disc and stick wooden dowels on it. Invite your child to thread pasta on the dowels. Let them sort by color also to squeeze in some math while exercising those little muscles. You could also introduce simple patterns by adding pasta in the order Green,yellow,green and so on.
4. Art Tray
Setting up a art/craft invitation is always enticing to kids and it promotes creativity and imagination. No rules here and let them create anything on their own on a paper using a supply of craft materials. For this themed craft tray I have used strips of green and white foam sheet, tissue paper squares, pom poms, tape and rainbow stickers.
5. Fill the Clover
A mini sensory invitation for St. Patrick’s day celebration. I cut two clover leaves out of cardboard and used green dyed rice as the sensory base along with gold coins from DT. The goal is to fill the clover using those tiny scoopers( a dollar spot find).
She meticulously filled both leaves and asked for another mason jar to collect all the rice left out 😊She used the slotted jar to post the coins too.
6. Playdough Invitation
If you’ve been following my blog for a while you would know I’m a big advocate of Playdough play and other sensory activities for little ones. Sensory play supports language development, fine motor skills, problem solving and social interaction. Along with carefully chosen loose parts they make the perfect medium for kids to explore their creativity.
In this Playdough tray I have the following items – ☘️ Homemade green play dough. ☘️plastic gold coins. ☘️craft sticks. ☘️foam balls. ☘️foam cloverleaf.
7. Sensory Bin
A fun sensory play invitation with a variety of textures to feel and play with. The loose parts in the bin include
☘️ Plastic grass
☘️Gold coins
☘️ Foam glitter shamrocks
☘️ Plastic pots
They counted the coins and sorted them to each pots, hid the coins in grass and took turns to find them. Later I got the dino stuffy toy for some pretend play and had so much fun!! My favorite was when she pretended to be a pirate who stole the pot of gold from dinos. Sensory Bin can also double as pretend play toy!!That’s the beauty of sensory bins.
What are your favorite St Patricks day activities? Do you set up themed activities at your home? Have you found it beneficial in doing so? For some setting up themed activities may not be possible and know that it’s ok. What the kids need is you and your previous time with them playing. Make the most out of that time in any way you both enjoy ♥️ Happy learning!!