Shamrock Shenanigans :)

Top o' the mornin' to ya! (typed in my best Blarney accent). I know that this is a little early for St. Patrick's Day, but I thought I would post a few trays that I put together for the first couple of weeks in March. We are not Catholic, we are not Irish, and we don't really observe St. Patrick's Day. (Not that there is anything wrong with any of that!) So why the activities you ask? Well, simply because I like the color green! I also like the history that St. Patrick is known for using the shamrock to explain to the Irish people the Trinity (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit). St. Patrick was a missionary to the Irish people and I think that it is an good thing to have a day to remember him and the calling he had on his life. Plus, these activities make me feel like spring is just around the corner.

I was excited to see that Target Dollar Spot had these little broom sets. I've been wanting to do an activity like this for a while. I've seen it on My Montessori Journey and I believe on Counting Coconuts. The object is to dump the shamrock confetti on the tray, sweep it into a pile in the rectangle, then sweep it into the dustpan and dump it back into the cup. I'm thinking that the confetti might prove to be too hard for them to sweep and we may have to switch to green beads. We will see how it goes the first couple of times. I know that they are going to enjoy this, my kids love to sweep for some reason.
This is similar to the rose soap tonging we had in February. I cut up a green and white lei and the kids will be using tweezers to put one flower in each spot.
Shamrock size sorting.
Counting practice using some of the cute unit printouts from Musings of Me.
To get those cute shamrock counters I bought a few necklaces at the Dollar Tree and then proceeded to cut them apart. It was a good 'after the kids are in bed' project.
Pouring activity. More necklaces that I cut apart. Something tells me that they are going to be bouncing all over the place. Note to self: Find some spare shelf liner to put on this tray before you set it out. The gold rocks I found at a thrift store, and the little shot glasses were at the Dollar Spot in Target.
My kids really liked the flower arranging that they got to do for Valentine's so I bought some green and whites sparkling with gold glitter flowers for St. Patrick's day.
I tried to mostly keep the leprechauns, luck, and the pot of gold out of my activities (just a personal thing). There were just a couple that I thought were so cute I couldn't resist.

These next activities can be printed off from 2 Teaching Mommies. This first one is How Many Coins. I printed off the numbers from the previous mentioned Musings of Me unit. 2 Teaching Mommies offers gold coins in their unit, but I thought it would be fun to use chocolate coins. I mounted the sheet to a cereal box and cut a hole in it. Annabelle will pick a number and put that many gold coins into the pot.
Then we have Lucky Charms graphing. I thought this was a genius idea and I know my kids will love to eat only the marshmallows for this activity. Pot o' Gold roll and cover. I just thought it will be really fun to use our do-a-dot markers to make a picture with these dots. I printed out a color key for the kids to follow as to what colors to put where.
Well, that's it and will keep us busy for the first couple weeks of March along with the other themes that I have planned it should be a pretty full month. I hope to post next week our sensory bins and play-doh. Still putting it together in my head. Happy blogging!

jess_hak

Linking to Preschool Corner and 1+1+1=1 Tot School....head on over to see what other amazing moms are doing with their kiddos. I promise you will be inspired. :)