GUESS WHAT TODAY IS??!!?!?!

 

 

 

Isn't she cute? But yes, it is St. Patrick's Day!!! The color green abounds and clovers cover every window! And look out for pincher's - they'll get you!

 

I just wanted to share a quick fact with you since I'm Irish and feel it's my duty.

 

Did you know...

that St. Patrick went around Ireland preaching the gospel and Christianizing the country! He used the clover to help teach the trinity of God (as shown below).

It makes me wonder how did a holiday honoring a man who preached the gospel turn into a drunk fest at bars?? Sad. But I still love my heritage and am proud of the work that St. Patrick did for his country! So go green, orange and white!

St. Patrick's Day Fun!!

How do you teach toddlers colors, have them exercise motor skills AND have fun doing science??! Well in my class I did this sensory table on St. Patrick's Day and the kids loved it! All I did was make one ice cube tray of with blue food coloring and one with yellow so we had blue and yellow ice cubes. When the kids arrived I dumped the ice cubes into a water table and gave them each a big spoon.

 

 

They stirred and stirred and slowly but surely the water turned green right before their eyes! they were amazed and then we spent the day of course talking about and showing them lots of examples of the color GREEN around us!

 

 

Later that same day we made Puffy Parsley Clovers for art. Here's what you need: Elmer's Glue, Shaving Cream and green food coloring.

 

Mix together some shaving cream and glue (roughly 1/3 glue as amount of shaving cream but trust me this is not a precise measurement type art!) Then mix in the green food coloring until you have desired color. I actually ran out because I learned it takes a LOT to make a true deep green so don't say I didn't warn you! So you will have to accept my minty green clovers for now.

 

Then cover a card stock clover with your shaving cream mixture. Once it's covered place the clover in a container and give the child a small bowl of parsley. Allow the child to sprinkle parsley all over the clover until covered or until they are content with it :)

Because if you know toddlers - some will cover the WHOLE thing until every last bit of parsley has been used and others will drop a few handfuls and be like okay where's the blocks? Ha ha, but that's the personalities of children and I encourage you to let them explore their world the way they want to. If art takes 5 seconds or 50 minutes - it's fine.

 

We also make elf pudding later that day! Vanilla pudding + green food coloring (hey it's St. Patrick's Day you need to stock up!) + Elf Cookies = Elf Pudding!! Simply stick the elf in the green pudding and use it as a spoon or dip it and then eat the cookie with pudding on it - or eat them separate if you are one of "those" that can't have your food touch!

 

One week away and I'm already pumped about St. Patrick's Day!!

Clover Pin Craft

We made these cute lil pins to wear on St. Patrick's Day! And of course I snapped some pictures to share this fun craft with you guys. This is super easy and takes only like 20 minutes from start to finish and the best part is you can adapt the design to fit any holiday or occasion!

You start by gathering the following supplies:

1. Hot Glue Gun and hot glue sticks
2. Decorative Ribbon

3. Stiff Felt (I used glittery ones to add sparkle)

4. Adhesive Pins

5. Scissors

6. Sharpie Marker

7. Decorative Embellishments - we used the glitter foam clover stickers

8. Clover Cookie cutter (or whatever cookie cutter fits your theme)

I had to take a close-up of the cute ribbon I found!

And in case you don't know what an adhesive pin backing is - this is what I'm talking about. Not sure I'm even using the right name but a picture is worth a thousand words right?

Next take the foam and trace your cookie cutter on the BACK side of your felt (you don't want marker lines showing on the front of your pin!)

Next you will take you cute ribbon and hot glue it down around the outer edge of your design.

To add a background layer trace a wider design on the darker color felt. I just placed the cookie cutter on the felt and drew about 1/4 or more above the cutter. If you don't have the skills required to do this somewhat free-hand buy a large and small cookie cutter of the same shape!

Then just hot glue the pieces together! If you are using sparkly felt make sure to hot glue so that both pieces are sparkly side up.

Next add your embellishments. However and wherever you like!

And last but not least remove the strip from the adhesive pin backing and hot glue it in the middle of the back of your pin. Because no the adhesive won't stick real well to furry felt.

I made each one just a tad different to experiment. We show them off below:

Have fun crafting!

St. Patty's Day Recap

ERIN GO BRAGH! That was the theme around our house on March 17th! For if you couldn't tell we are Irish and proud of it! I had a handful of things I wanted to do with my kids and most of them got done! Yay! We started by reading a book all about St. Patrick's Day. It explained the history, why we celebrate, how most celebrate and so and so forth. It was written for kids so it was short enough to keep their attention. The best quote from the day came from reading this book, allow me to break it down for you. We turn the page to a picture of St. Patrick and it explains who the actual man is. When I point to the picture and say "See this is him here." My son goes "Mom that's not Patrick. Patrick is a starfish!" Oh you got to love children. (If you are out of mom loop he was referring to Spongebob Squarepant's best friend Patrick the Star Fish.)

Anyways after knowing ABOUT the day we started our festivities. First things first find some clovers! We had some growing around our yard so I made them go out and hunt for them. I eventually had to help give them a general area to look in because they kept pulling everything green out of my yard saying "Is this a clover???" We found the clovers and took a quick pic on my phone of which was sent immediately to Mima and Papa to wish them Happy St. Patrick's Day.

2nd we painted some on our faces. Since now we knew what they looked like! I painted proper heart shaped three leaf clovers on both my kiddos but by me I got lazy and did a quick circle 4-leaf one. I know. Shame on me.


Since my clover wasn't up to par - I had fun playing with this photo in my editing program, lol - and no I didn't go for good - just goofy mainly! (see below)

We then made really adorable Clover pins to wear proudly on our green shirts (or dresses if you are Gracie) - but this will be saved for a separate craft post.

So then in the hot afternoon we made some Leprechaun milkshakes to cool off! These were so fun for the kids and made a yummy snack!

Just vanilla ice-cream, milk and green food dye.

Ta-da! Looks like slime in the pic but I promise it was dairy goodness.

This was gone about 5 seconds later. Well maybe 2 minutes later, considering 5 seconds would result in a massive brain freeze!

I was watching one of our neighbor's kids that day so all three kiddos enjoyed slurping up their Leprechaun milkshakes!

This picture doesn't even need a comment it's so cute! So hope everyone had a Happy St. Patrick's Day!!!