St. Patrick’s Day is just around the corner! I love incorporating holiday activities into the classroom to keep kids engaged in learning. These themed activities are not only enjoyable but also help promote creativity, develop fine motor skills, and introduce concepts like simple machines. Plus, you can do them with the supplies you already have in your classroom or home!
Sensory Bins
St. Patrick’s Day is a great holiday to explore and learn about colors. Although green is the main color that represents the holiday, there’s plenty of opportunity to learn about all the colors of the rainbow. One of my favorite ways to incorporate color recognition and explorative play is through a sensory bin. You can even make many different sensory bins at home that can be relevant to your child’s specific interests.
In my classroom, I use a giant Tupperware bin on the floor for easy access for children to use either on all fours or sitting on the ground. An easy filler for a rainbow sensory bin is colored rice. I typically use rubbing alcohol, food coloring, and a big bag of rice, shake it all together and let it dry on a cookie sheet overnight! I also add pom poms and stars of various colors.
I like to provide kids-sized tweezers which helps develop fine motor skills. Have empty containers available for them to pick up different pieces and sort them by color! To jazz it up, you can find small goodies at the dollar store to add fun pieces like black pots, gold coins, shamrocks, or green gems. If you choose to make the sensory bin in a smaller clip tote, it makes for easy storage to put away and take out for years to come.
Playdough
Fine motor muscles (the tiny muscles in children’s hands) are important for building fundamental motor skills for writing. Making green playdough and adding pieces such as four-leaf clovers, rainbow beads, pipe cleaners, gold coins, and googly eyes are another way to keep the St. Patrick’s Day theme going while continuing their independent play and helping grow their imagination. If you have small rolling pins and shamrock cookie cutters of different sizes you can have your children roll out their dough and cut out fun St. Patrick’s Day shapes!
Leprechaun Traps
For older kids in kindergarten and 1st grade, a higher-level activity to try is building leprechaun traps. Start by reading the story “How to Catch a Leprechaun” by Adam Wallce. It offers children the opportunity to use critical thinking skills to think about simple machines and traps. Then, let them build their own! You can use common materials like an empty Kleenex box, cardboard box, string, popsicle sticks, and truly any other craft materials you are comfortable with your child utilizing! This makes for a fun, engaging and creative process.
Overall St. Patrick’s Day and the month of March offer so many opportunities to play, learn, and explore! These just happen to be a few of my favorites that I use in the classroom.
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