St. Patrick's Day Cards

To share our love of all that is Irish with our family and friends, we made these St. Patrick's Day cards.  Eva stamped a "shamrock" on the front using a pepper top and some green paint.

When they were dry, I added a message- Shamrocks are green, Dinos are too... Happy St. Patrick's Day!  I love you!  Eva signed her name and we taped in a picture of her posing with her favorite dinos.

We also whipped up a batch of green cupcakes (lemon cake mix with green food coloring added) to snack on when we visit Grammy and Papa for the holiday.

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

May the Luck of the Irish be with YOU!

Somewhere Over the Rainbow

Fortunately we have had no rain this week but that meant no rainbows to follow to find pots of gold.  So we made our own rainbow out of construction paper.  I started out by using a compass to draw half circles on different color construction paper.  It turns out the pack of paper we have doesn't have any purple so our rainbow is not quite a full ROY G BIV.  Starting with red and going down to blue, each half circle decreases in size.  I laid them all out on Eva's art table and had her find the biggest, the next biggest and so on.  (Eva did pretty well with this but it was a little challenging.  I'm thinking of making more rainbow pieces out of felt for her to build rainbows on the felt board and further practice sorting from biggest to smallest.)

As she found each circle she glued it to the one before using a glue stick.

When all the pieces had been put together, we squirted some white glue along the bottom and glued cotton balls on for clouds.

Ta da!  A rain-free rainbow- the best kind if you ask me!

Happy St. Patrick's Day

I hope you all had a wonderful St. Patrick's Day!  We enjoyed a gorgeous day filled with green- indoors and out!
Eva found her very own shillelagh,

and we danced Irish jigs outside in the sunshine.

We are not big corned beef or cabbage eaters so we opted for a "green" dinner instead.  I sauteed some shallots and garlic in olive oil, threw in half a pound of raw shrimp, some salt, pepper, basil, oregano, and a handful of frozen peas.  When the shrimp was opaque, I added a little butter and lemon juice and some parsley and then stirred in spinach fettucine.  A super quick, green dinner that tasted fresh and yummy!

Pot 'o Gold

Leprechauns struck early and left some gold hidden for Eva in her sensory tub.  It was our first time using split peas and they were a hit.  Eva loved how they felt and had more fun playing with them than digging for the gold.

After finding and then reburying the gold coins at least a half a dozen times, we threw in the shamrock cookie cutter and that led to more fun.

I can see this tub being a source of tons 'o entertainment over the coming weeks.

Potato Prints

It's hard to think of Ireland without thinking of potatoes.  In order to incorporate them into our St. Patrick's Day festivities we used them to create cards to send to the grandparents.  I cut a small potato in half and then used a tiny heart-shaped cookie cutter to cut a shamrock shape into the potato.  I then took a knife and cut around the edge of the potato about 1mm from the edge and only as deep as the shamrock.  The outside pieces then popped right off leaving a raised shamrock for stamping.

I pushed a few toothpicks into the outside of the potato to give Eva a little more to hang on to and she dipped the stamp into green paint and went to town.

We left them to dry and will be writing messages in them tomorrow.

Eva also got her daily play dough fix with a fresh batch of green play dough that I made using this recipe- the best I've found yet and a shamrock cookie cutter.

Wee Irish Baker

We are heading to my parents today to visit and to see Sesame Street Live so we whipped up a special treat to bring along with us- green Rice Krispy Treats!  We followed the recipe on the box but added a teaspoon of vanilla to the melted marshmallows and a few drops of green food coloring.

 Eva was kind enough to sample the ingredients for quality control.
Here's the mixture after the food coloring was added:

When everything was spread into the pan we added some green sprinkles to make them even more festive.  Yum!

Everybody's Irish This Week

This week will be about all things Irish- leprechauns, pots of gold, rainbows and lots of green!  We will be celebrating St. Patrick and our Irish roots through crafts, stories, treats and even some jigs.

Books
Tomie De Paola has written and illustrated some of the great legends of Ireland.  The books are little wordy for the toddler crowd but the illustrations are great and can keep some two year olds absorbed in the story.

(Image source- Barnes and Noble)

Some other fun books celebrating the spirit of the Irish include:

(Image source- Barnes and Noble)

And some books about things that are green:

(Image source- Barnes and Noble)

Let's not forget about rainbows!

(Image source- Barnes and Noble)

Small Motor Activities

Green play dough-  we made a fresh batch of play dough in anticipation of the this week using this recipe. 

Shamrock Transfer- we will be using tweezers to transfer tissue paper shamrocks from one bowl to another

Green Sensory Tub- what treasures will we find buried within a tub filled with split peas?

Large Motor Activities

Dance Party- we will be dancing an Irish jig to some Celtic music that you can download free here

Crafts

Potato Painting- we will be using potatoes to stamp out some neat Irish designs

Coffee Filter Shamrocks- Did you know that if you color on a coffee filter with markers and then spritz it with water you can make a neat watercolor painting?  We will be showing you how this week.

Shamrock Headband- we will be making a festive Irish headband to wear on St. Patrick's Day

Rainbow- using half-circles of construction paper we will be working on sorting items from biggest to smallest to form a beautiful rainbow

Green Collage- we will hunt through old magazines for pictures of green things to create a lovely collage

Cooking

Green Rice Krispy Treats- yum

Rainbow Fruit Salad

On St. Patrick's Day we will have a green menu- what foods can you think of that are green?

Other Activities

Five Green and Speckled Frogs- we will be bringing out the felt board to help us sing this fun song about our little green friends