St Patrick's Day Activities for Toddlers
I should really start thinking of these ideas BEFORE I want to do them. I've been staying up until midnight recently, just racking my brain for ideas for the NEXT day. Seriously. I need to work on this!
Anyway, as usual, I peruse Instagram and (sometimes) Pinterest and Google images, then I take what I see and make it work for Alexander. Sometimes I take an idea and just totally copy it, but I usually tweak it so that it works for us. He likes certain things, so I want to cater to them, to help him grow and stay engaged.
For this St Patrick's Day, Alexander is 2 years 9 months. Here are the ideas we used this year:
1. From Busy Toddler (busytoddler.com and also on Instagram), rainbow rice. To make this, I poured 1/2 cup of plain white rice into each of 6 small plastic bags. Then I squeeze 4 drops of food coloring in each bag. In one bag, it was 4 red drops. In the second bag, it was 2 red, 2 yellow to make orange. Then 4 yellow, 4 green, 4 blue, and 2 red+2 blue. Alexander and I took turns shaking the bags vigorously, to dye all of the rice. I poured each bag, carefully, into a large metal tray, to create a rainbow. I set it by a window, in the sun, to dry for an hour or so. Then I offered Alexander several types of spoons to practice scooping! Afterward, he helped me by using a measuring cup to scoop the rice and pour it into a bag, to use again another day.
2. From Busy Toddler again (she's awesome, by the way!), a green bath. I found all the green water-safe toys I could, placed them in the bathtub, and filled it up with water along with one good squeeze of food coloring. It didn't make a mess, as you might have been wondering!
3. Stickers + Matching. This was SO easy to put together. First, I stuck plain white stickers to a sheet of printer paper. Second, I found an image of a shamrock on the internet and printed it onto that piece of paper. Third, I wrote capital letters on the stickers. Finally, I removed the stickers one by one and wrote the lowercase letter underneath. Voila! Easy peasy. Alexander simply had to match the letters and place the sticker where it needed to go!
4. Banish the Snakes. One of the many legends surrounding St Patrick’s Day is that St Patrick drove all of the snakes out of Ireland. “Since snakes often represent evil in literature, ‘when Patrick drives the snakes out of Ireland, it is symbolically saying he drove the old, evil, pagan ways out of Ireland [and] brought in a new age.’ “ (If you’ve never read it, you should read some of the history/legends surrounding this holiday, like why we use a shamrock, wear green, etc. It’s interesting!) This activity is “banishing snakes” by pushing the pipe cleaners into a container, therefore making them disappear. For Alexander, at just 2.5 years, it’s just practicing some fine motor skills.
5. Rainbow Bubbles. Woo! This was fun. I used baking soda, vinegar, and food coloring for this one. In a big plastic bin, I put about six 1/4 teaspoons of baking soda, separated. On each little pile, I squeezed a few drops of food coloring (like in #1). Then I put some white vinegar in a cup along with an eye dropper tool. Alexander simply drew water into the dropper and squeezed it onto each little pile!
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zyuXxMk-d5s]
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGcZZTsb7qY]
6. Shamrock Painting (NOT DONE). The afternoon got away from us, so this one didn't happen! But here's the idea: Mix up some green paint and cut a green bell pepper (that I already had) into rings. Dip the pepper into paint and stamp it onto some paper. The cross section of the pepper is shaped similarly to a shamrock!
