Toddler Art: St. Patrick's Day

For this month's Toddler Art, I kept the holiday theme and all three crafts and sensory bin were centered around St. Patrick's Day. 

Our first craft was "Leprechaun Craft with a Fork Beard." I think this was my favorite craft and the group enjoyed it too. I liked the idea of using forks to make Leprechaun's beard and is a great craft to practice fine motor skills. We completed the craft by gluing a green top hat onto him. 

This blogger has an easy option to purchase her printable hat and face template, but I chose to make my own being from a thrifty library. It really wasn't that much of a hassle to make using clipart from Google, but it's always nice to see a template option for a craft. 

Our second craft was a "Hand-print Shamrock." I knew that most of the kids would like dipping their hands in the green paint and pressing it onto the paper to make a shamrock shape, but there are some kids who need to feel more comfortable with getting messy with paint and this was a great craft for them. I decided not to have their hand prints cut out like in the original and it worked out just as well. I also noticed that the kids who had trouble making their shamrock shape decided to make their own art and that can be just as fun and creative. 

The last craft of the day was "Rainbow Chain Craft." I used this craft for my drop-in program, but I thought it would be just as beneficial for this group seeing as the construction paper chains are always good for fine motor skills and would be easy enough for this group. 

We ended class by experimenting with our "leprechaun rocks." This was such a hit with Preschool Picasso that I had to share this activity with this group. They have fun using the spray bottle, discovering for gold coins, and watching the concoction fizz and bubble. Use 1 cup of baking soda and 1/4 cup of water mixed with green food coloring dried overnight. Vinegar is put in spray bottles for the kids to try the next day. 
 

Drop-In and Get Crafty: St. Patrick's Day

I usually don't hold a drop-in craft program for St. Patrick's Day, but this year I did. I had a wonderful turnout and surprisingly, there are a lot of St. Patrick's Day crafts to choose from, especially if you count rainbow crafts.

I chose a  rainbow chain craft I seen pinned on Pinterest. You can find the direct link here. I liked this craft because I thought it would take a while for the kids to make and they could work on their fine motor skills and colors. It also makes a cute door hanger.

The craft worked so well, I ended up using it as one of my crafts for Toddler Art. Normally, I don't like to reuse crafts, especially so soon, but I figured that most of this group doesn't attend Toddler Art and there would be two new crafts anyway.

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Preschool Picasso: St. Patrick's Day

Since the holiday themes are always a good way to go, we had a St. Patrick's Day theme for this month's Preschool Picasso. There are a lot of good craft ideas out there for this one and a bunch of rainbow ideas, which could be used as a theme of its own.

We followed along to our bean bag song and then I read Green Shamrocks by Eve Bunting. Rabbit grew some shamrocks so he can wear them for the St. Patrick's Day parade, but they end up going missing. He has to ask all his animal friends if they took the gold pot with his shamrocks growing inside. 

I chosen this book because it is a cute St. Pat's story that is just the right length for a program like this and it tied in with our crafts, specifically the St. Patrick's Day necklace craft.

The group enjoyed the story and then it was time to do some art! We used green and yellow markers and spray bottles filled with water to make tie-dyed shamrocks on heart shaped coffee filters. This group loves to play with the spray bottles and they seen how these two colors blended together compared to the red and purple we used for Valentine's Day hearts.
 
While we were waiting for this craft to dry, everyone worked on their St. Patrick's Day necklace. They wrote their names on the shamrock and threaded fruit loops through gold ribbon. They liked this craft and wanted to eat some of the fruit loops and smelled their fruity scent. This was a good craft to work on their fine motor skills. 

Our leprechaun rocks, St. Pat's necklace, and tie-dyed shamrock.

We ended Preschool Picasso by playing with Leprechaun rocks. These were "rocks" made out of 1 cup baking soda and 1/4 cup water mixed with green food coloring. The kids used spray bottles filled with vinegar to spray on the rocks. We watched how they fizzed, bubbled, and dissolved the rocks and discovered each rock had a lucky gold coin inside. They loved this one so much and the parents were asking for the recipe. The kids noticed the strong smell of vinegar and got introduced to some fun science. 

Happy St. Patrick's Day!