Leprechaun School

Last week, in honor of St. Patrick's Day, we focused on shamrock/leprechaun themed activities instead of focusing on any particular letter.  (I.e., we will finish out our letter of the week themes before we finish our school year so I am scrambling around for some other-themed review weeks.)

{David is 3 years, 11 months old ... Claire is 5 years, 11 months old}

David's printables came from Over the Big Moon.  They have awesome printables and I like that they contain activities appropriate for both my preschooler and my kindergartner.

Here is David working on uppercase/lowercase shamrock matching.

Leprechaun number puzzle.  Both my kids love this puzzle even though they just line up the numbers 1-10.  It's really not that hard but they like to work it over and over again!

Size sorting.  I like that this pack has small, medium and large.

One of these things are not like the other ... can you find it.  A few of these were really challenging for David and Claire.

Tracing.

Pattern activity.

Leprechaun Maze.  David LOVES mazes right now.  He asks to do one everyday. 

Coloring shamrocks.  He did this activity all by himself.

Counting clip cards.

Shadow matching.

Shamrock counting.  David had to put the numbers 1-20 in order.

Once they were in order, I called out a number and he brought it back to me until they were all picked up.  (Haha!  This activity served two purposes!)

Paper plate rainbow wreaths.  I think I found this idea on Pinterest, but to be honest, I might have combined several ideas just to use what we already had. 

 (1) Color paper plate rainbows.

(2) Cut out center of plate.  (The kids thought this was so funny!)

(3) Add foam shamrocks.

(4) Torture baby brother ... ha!  He doesn't really look like he is being tortured. 

David made a green collage with green finger paint and lots of green shamrock stickers, etc.

He had lots of fun finger painting!  Claire helped him glue on his green stuff.

The finished product.

Working on three-part word cards.  This is the first time we have done this activity and he did a great job matching the pictures and the words.  And this is the first time we've used our tabletop pocket chart that I got in December.

And here is baby brother looking really cute in his green.

We also made tissue paper shamrock.  This was definitely more age-appropriate for Claire ... using a pencil to twist the tissue paper squares and then gluing to shamrock shape.

David tried really hard and did get the concept.  I helped him finish his up.

Claire with her finished shamrock.

It's not easy being green ... everyone wearing their St. Patrick's Day green. 

NOTE: Luke did not want to be in this picture!

Shamrock shakes.  (Milkshakes with mint chocolate chip ice cream ... my favorite!)

We did a few activities from this website, like these pot-of-gold coloring-by-number pages.

We also did some Lucky Charms marshmallow graphing.  They're magically delicious.  But the kids did not think so!  We had this for a snack one day and they were not fans!

We also made paper plate leprechaun.  The kids enjoyed painting.  And they actually got to do it twice since I used the wrong size plate the first time.  Go here for instructions.

Cute!  They drew the noses and mouths all by themselves.

Finally, our traditional St. Patrick's Day feast.  I have always wanted to make corned beef and cabbage for St. Patty's Day so this year I finally did it!  I used this recipe for the crock-pot but I would recommend cooking your carrots and cabbage about 2 hours as opposed to the 30 minutes the recipes states.  The veggies were "just tender" and I would have preferred them a little more cooked.

This post is linked up to these great blogs ... check them out for more great learning ideas!