The luck of an Irish

Well we had our little party for the big green day and what a blast we had doing all sorts of fun little things through out the day.

We made our own Happy St. Patrick's Day pictures on green paper, with stickers and drawings.

Shamrock Hats

What you need:

• green paper
• scissors
• stickers
• stapler
• pipe cleaners

How to make these fancy hats:

• Cut 2 shamrocks for each child out of green paper
• Cut a strips of green paper long enough to wrap around your child's head (you might have to tape two pieces together to make it big enough)
• Let the children decorate the head band strips
• Once decorated, wrap the paper around the child's head to make sure its the right size and then staple together.
• Staple a pipe cleaner to the back of each shamrock
• Staple the other end of the pipe cleaner the the head band paper
• Once finished you might want to place a piece of tape over the staples so that they don't get caught in the children's hair, or make sure when you staple that the loops of the staple are to the outside of the head.

Each child received a green beaded neck lace today also to wear with their new hats.

While I was making lunch I found some St. Patrick's Day shows on YouTube for the children to watch (as I don't have any of my own!)

 








For lunch we had some fun also......
I cut their sandwiches in to shamrock shapes
We had cucumbers (cause they are green!)
Our juice was the "pot of gold" as is was a citrus punch
Dessert was vanilla pudding that I died green with food coloring (the kids thought this was just amazing!)









During Lunch time we listened to some Irish and St. Patrick's Day music. 








 

Our afternoon snack they children got to have fun decorating sugar cookies with green icing and shamrock sprinkles.




While the children had their nap/quiet time, I painted small clay pots so they were black.  Once dried I placed gold chocolate coins in them.  And they can take their pot of gold home for a treat for later (we all know, I have given the kids enough sugar with the cookies and icing, there is no way they get chocolate here too.  Mom and Dad can deal with that sugar high!)

Check out additional pictures at Ducky's Photos

Leading up to St. Patrick's Day

We Start off our St Patrick's Day crafts at the end of last week.  I was short on kids so I didn't want to move into the next farm animal yet so.... what better to do then more fun crafts!

Here are some of the crafts that lead us up to the big Irish Day.


We colored numerous St. Patty Day pictures:

Page can be found at Parenting Leehansen.com

Page can be found at Craft Elf

Page can be found at dulemba.blogspot.com
 



Tie-died Coffee Filter Shamrocks

This craft came from Kaboose website, I just changed a few things to make it easier for the younger ones.

What you need:

• coffee filters
• green markers
• Q-tips
• Small dish of water
• scissors

How to make your tie-die Shamrocks:

1. Have the children color all over the coffee filter with the green makers. (Don't worry about designs or anything fancy, just let them scribble for once!)
2. After they have colored the filters dip your Q-tip in the water
3. Then on to the colored filters
4. Now watch the magic happen...... the water makes the coloring run and forms fancy designs of its own
5. Set filters to the side to dry
6. Once dry cut the filters into the shape of shamrocks and hang up for decorations!

Treasure Boxes

I found some cute little wooden boxes at the Dollar store and thought that they would make great little treasure chests for the children.

What you need:

• Small boxes (doesn't have to be wooden ones they could be cardboard too)
• Green paint
• Paint Brushes
• Gems (we used little jewels, that I found at the Dollar Store)
• Glue

Instead of gems/jewels you could use:

• buttons
• beads
• stickers
• little rocks

How we made our treasure chests:

1. Paint the boxes green
2. Let dry
3. Glue the little gems on to the box
4. Let dry
5. Now your little ones have their very own special box to keep whatever they like to in it

A Treasure Hunt

While the children were painting there Treasure Boxes, I headed to the living room for a bit and started hiding some St Patrick's Day goodies.  Also at the Dollar Store, I found some green coins and shinny shamrocks... I picked them up just because I knew the children would love them.  So I thought for a while on what we could do with these fun little items.  That's when I came up with the idea for the treasure hunt to go along with our sparkly boxes.  With having younger children, I decided not to hide our treasure in any place all to hard for them to find.  They were all located in plain sight for them to find, yet they still had to look for them.  Once they found them they were able to put their treasures in their own boxes to keep and take home.

Remember to check out Ducky's Photos for more amazing pictures of the children having fun.

A rainbow and snack

Our St. Patrick's Day craft started today with a snack and craft in one.

We made rainbows out of Fruit Loops and Cheerios. First I had the children sort the Fruit Loops by color and of course they were eating just as many as they were putting in the dishes!  This was great because we were able to do a number of activities and learning experiences at once. 

• Snack
• Learning colors (for those that don't know their colors yet)
• Sorting/math skills

While the children finished sorting the colored Fruit Loops, I was making the outline of the rainbow.  I wasn't able to find one that I liked from the Internet so I decided to do it myself.  I imagine if I took some more time I would have found one, but instead I just drew two clouds at the bottom of each paper and connected them with one big loop for the starting of the rainbow.



What you need:

• Heavy paper (card stock) in the colour you choose
• Glue
• Fruit Loops
• Cheerios
• Template of a rainbow

Directions:

1. Have the children place glue along the top row of the rainbow and place the red fruit loops long it
2. Continue the first step until you reach the final color (each row will get smaller and smaller)
3. Place glue inside the cloud and use the cheerios for this

Colors of the Rainbow in order:

1. Red
2. Orange
3. Yellow
4. Green
5. Blue
6. Indigo
7. Violet (Purple)

Of course we skipped the indigo cause Fruit Loops don't come in that color!!!!

Other ideas: 

Instead of fruit loops you could use

• beads
• buttons
• tissue paper
• colored pasta
• colored rice

Instead of the cheerios you could use

• cotton balls
• white tissue paper
• rice
• pasta
• white buttons
• white beads

Remember to check out Ducky's Photos for more pictures of today's craft

Lion or Lamb

So the old saying goes.....
IF MARCH COMES IN LIKE A LION IT GOES OUT LIKE A LAMB

Well I sure hope this stands true, the kids and I are tired of winter already.  We have hardly been able to go outside, between the ugly weather and all the colds we seem to be passing around.

March 1st surely came in like a lion here is Saskatchewan, with a temperature of -39 Celsius with the windchill.  So none the less we stayed inside again and did some crafts for this fun little saying.  Now lets hope it starts to change over the the lamb real soon, so we can go outside for a while during the day.

We made LAMBS and LIONS.


What you need:
cotton balls
scrap paper (pink, black, orange, brown, yellow)
Black marker
paper plates
glue
scissors
brown or black pipe cleaners
googly eyes










What you do:
LION

1. Cut the yellow, brown, and orange paper in the small strips about 2" to 3" in length
2. glue strips of colour paper around the outside edge of one of the paper plates
3. add folded pipe cleaners to the sides of the face for whiskers
4. add eyes and a black triangle to the middle for a nose
5. We then added a mouth with a black marker and a few dots for details for the whiskers

LAMB

1. glue cotton balls around the outside edge of a paper plate
2. add googly eyes and a pink triangle to the center of the plate for a nose
3. we then drew on a mouth with a black marker
4. if you have extra paper laying around you can make a bow and glue it on to the top of the lambs head too, if you would like.

A fun easy project to do with children.  And each day they can look outside and change the face of the animal to how the weather is.  So if its cold and ugly out, its a lion day and if its nice and warm its a lamb day.

Chicken Week Days 2 and 3

Sorry I didn't get yesterday craft posted, I ran out of time before my day came to an end!  So I will make both yesterdays and today's in one post. 

So we have done a few more crafts along with reading some chicken/duck stories and coloring another picture.

For the next stage in the chickens life we colored:

Chickens in a nest can be found at www.coloring.ws

As for crafts we made chicks that hatch and form chicken pictures.

Chicks that Hatch

What you need:

Plastic Eggs (you can usually find these around Easter time in stores, they open up and you can fill them with candy or little gifts)
Large yellow pom poms (two for each child)
googly eyes
orange foam or construction paper
white glue

What to do:

1. Place a decent amount of white glue in the bottom portion of the egg
2. Stick a yellow pom pom into it
3. Then glue the second pom pom on top of the first one
4. Glue your eyes and beak on to the top pom pom 

Once they are dry you can then show the children how the egg hatches!!  My little ones had fun showing me how they can hatch their eggs all by themselves.

Foam Chickens

What you need:
Yellow foam
Red Foam
Orange Foam
Googly Eyes
Glue
Scissors
pencil

What you do:

1. Draw the shape of a large egg for the body of yellow foam
2. Draw the shape of two wings on yellow foam
3. Draw feet and beaks on the orange foam
4. Draw the head piece of a chicken on the red foam
5. Let the children cut the shapes out (if they aren't old enough to cut you might have to do this part too!)
6. Glue pieces together to make the chicken 
7. Add eyes 

Reading:

I had the older children look through the book shelf to see if they could pick out the chicken books.
Here's what they came back with.... (I know they are not about chickens but they were pretty darn close, so we read them anyways). 

Book 1:
The Ugly Duckling
From the Series "Baby Bear's Read Along"

Book 2:
Duck Duck Moose
Written by Dave Horowitz

I tried to explain to the children the difference between ducks and chickens, now I am not to sure if the younger one know the difference yet or not......  But I am still happy they found "bird" books by themselves.


Take a look at additional pictures at: Ducky's Photos