In the Haley family, we take some pride in our heritage! While I am not Irish, (well, ok, possibly like 5% on my grandma’s side) my husband Todd comes from a very large Irish family and so St. Patrick’s day has always been a fun holiday around here!
This year we came up with a couple of activities to get the kids involved in celebrating before we go to the little parade in town on Saturday and we eat our corned beef and cabbage! Take a look at a few things we did to celebrate!
This year we came up with a couple of activities to get the kids involved in celebrating before we go to the little parade in town on Saturday and we eat our corned beef and cabbage! Take a look at a few things we did to celebrate!
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Rainbow Color Match
This was a pretty easy project to get set up and we actually ended up tying in a few bonus activities as it played out! I first drew a simple rainbow using markers on a white piece of paper. (As a science teacher, I really wanted to go with ROY G BIV, but figured we’d better stick to just purple for now at Xander’s age).
I then gave the boys our favorite craft supply--Dot Dot markers-- to stamp on each of the colored rainbow lines. I then had them dig through our bin of beans & beads to find a colored bead or object to match each color of their rainbow.
Leo wanted to do something with the beads, so we practiced stringing the beads on a pipe cleaner which is a good fine motor activity! Taso enjoyed just coloring with his crayons as usual, but I let him experiment with the Dot Dots as well!
This was a pretty easy project to get set up and we actually ended up tying in a few bonus activities as it played out! I first drew a simple rainbow using markers on a white piece of paper. (As a science teacher, I really wanted to go with ROY G BIV, but figured we’d better stick to just purple for now at Xander’s age).
I then gave the boys our favorite craft supply--Dot Dot markers-- to stamp on each of the colored rainbow lines. I then had them dig through our bin of beans & beads to find a colored bead or object to match each color of their rainbow.
Leo wanted to do something with the beads, so we practiced stringing the beads on a pipe cleaner which is a good fine motor activity! Taso enjoyed just coloring with his crayons as usual, but I let him experiment with the Dot Dots as well!
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Calming Homemade Grain-Free Play Dough
I’ve always liked the idea of making our own play dough but could never really find a recipe that I liked. While browsing through my friend Krista’s blog (www.happyhealthycasa.com) and Instagram (@happyhealthycasa), I found that she had tried out a fellow bloggers’ (Danielle Walker) clean & natural play dough recipe awhile back as a valentine's day activity. You can see her post here. I decided to try out the grain-free recipe--mainly because it required less ingredients! Leo was a great helper by dumping the ingredients into a bowl. He loves helping with projects or in the kitchen. Here’s a link to Danielle’s recipe!
I’ve always liked the idea of making our own play dough but could never really find a recipe that I liked. While browsing through my friend Krista’s blog (www.happyhealthycasa.com) and Instagram (@happyhealthycasa), I found that she had tried out a fellow bloggers’ (Danielle Walker) clean & natural play dough recipe awhile back as a valentine's day activity. You can see her post here. I decided to try out the grain-free recipe--mainly because it required less ingredients! Leo was a great helper by dumping the ingredients into a bowl. He loves helping with projects or in the kitchen. Here’s a link to Danielle’s recipe!
I wanted to add in some essential oils to make it an aromatherapy play dough! I chose Peace & Calming and Valor from Young Living since those are oils that I use in our tantrum tamer rollerball! The combination smells wonderful and the boys really enjoyed it! Rather than adding a certain food dye to this batch (didn’t have anything on hand...oops) I decided to just add in some green beads to keep it festive and on theme! This is another good fine motor activity to have the boys try to pick out all of the beads from the play dough.
St. Patrick's Day Books
We found some new St. Patrick’s Day books to add to our collection while on a little trip to the mall with my sisters! They had quite a few to pick from so we selected one that was more geared towards Taso’s level (board book) and then a few other titles to potentially inspire building some leprechaun traps in the future! They might be slightly too young this year, but I think Leo will be at the perfect trap-building age next March!
Here were the books that we chose:
Elmo’s Lucky Day
Jamie O’Rourke and the Big Potato
Pete the Cat The Great Leprechaun Chase
Three Ways to Trap a Leprechaun
We had a lot of fun reading these books over and over! It's fun to be able to take out holiday-themed books when their time of year comes around (or just keep them out all year!)
We found some new St. Patrick’s Day books to add to our collection while on a little trip to the mall with my sisters! They had quite a few to pick from so we selected one that was more geared towards Taso’s level (board book) and then a few other titles to potentially inspire building some leprechaun traps in the future! They might be slightly too young this year, but I think Leo will be at the perfect trap-building age next March!
Here were the books that we chose:
Elmo’s Lucky Day
Jamie O’Rourke and the Big Potato
Pete the Cat The Great Leprechaun Chase
Three Ways to Trap a Leprechaun
We had a lot of fun reading these books over and over! It's fun to be able to take out holiday-themed books when their time of year comes around (or just keep them out all year!)
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Finger-paint Shamrock & Clover Decorations
Yiayia was over yesterday so you know that means the boys get to finger-paint! We used blue and yellow and had the boys guess what color they would make by mixing them! They of course love any chance to finger-paint and get their hands dirty. (Taso was still skeptical)
Once they had sufficiently mixed the colors into the perfect St. Patrick’s day green, we let their papers dry. I then cut out a few shamrocks and clovers that we will use to decorate the kitchen on St. Patrick’s day.
Yiayia was over yesterday so you know that means the boys get to finger-paint! We used blue and yellow and had the boys guess what color they would make by mixing them! They of course love any chance to finger-paint and get their hands dirty. (Taso was still skeptical)
Once they had sufficiently mixed the colors into the perfect St. Patrick’s day green, we let their papers dry. I then cut out a few shamrocks and clovers that we will use to decorate the kitchen on St. Patrick’s day.
I hope you enjoyed our simple ways of helping the boys begin to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day!
Does your family have any special traditions from your heritage? Share them in the comments!
Happy St. Patrick’s Day!
Does your family have any special traditions from your heritage? Share them in the comments!
Happy St. Patrick’s Day!
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