Marching Green

Today is one of my favorite smaller holidays. St. Patrick's Day is super fun for me because I love the color green AND my dad's side of the family is Irish, so we always did up a corned beef brisket, cabbage and potatoes, along with making everything we possibly could green!

And this year Little Dude is finally getting old enough to really help and get excited, so he will be my little kitchen helper today too!

And in honor of St. Patrick, I will share a fun activity my preschool kids loved:

Make Shamrocks
What you need:
Sandpaper
Scissors
Crayons
Paper

Cut shamrock shapes out of sandpaper. Depending on the age and skill of your child, you can let them cut or you can cut for them. If your children are younger, make sure you are using safety scissors and watching.

Once the shamrock shapes are cut, show your child how to place his paper over the shamrock and rub with the side of a crayon to get a St. Patrick's Day design!

This is a really fun activity to learn about texture and appearance of texture. You can also cut the shamrock shapes out after rubbing on a textured surface if you want to go take the kids outside and have them find textures in nature-like tree bark, sand, concrete, leaves, bricks, etc. Rubbing those textures will be easier with a big piece of paper, then have the kids cut out shamrock shapes from the bigger piece.

There is all kinds of fun you can have too-make green Kool-Aid, put green dye into juice or water, make green pancakes (either by pureeing veggies into the batter or just adding dye).

Have tons of fun, and if you feel like it, take the time to teach your little ones about St. Patrick.