St. Patrick's Day Activities

Even if you're not Irish or in Ireland, these St. Patrick's Day activities can be beneficial to your toddler's development as well as being a lot of fun.

St. Patrick's Day Crafts

A Creative Shamrock Puzzle

1. Cut out 3 (or 4 if want to be "lucky") clover leaf shapes from white or light green card about 10cm (4") in diameter.
2. Cut up different shades of green tissue paper, gift wrap or other thin paper into small pieces.
3. Provide glue - a spread-on glue stick would work well with this toddler activity.
4. Let your toddler decorate the shamrock leaves.
5. Print out or draw an outline of a shamrock so that the decorated leaves can be placed in position on top by your toddler (she'll probably repeat it a few times but you could certainly encourage that).
6. Since your toddler helped make this puzzle, it may become well used so it would be a good idea to either laminate or cover the pieces with sticky-back plastic.

Shamrock Printing

1. If you are feeling creative you could cut a shamrock shape out of a potato or sponge, otherwise you could find a shamrock stamp in a craft supply shop (store).
2. When I do printing with toddlers, they love to paint a Chinese take-away lid as the first step (because we use powder paint, which has to be mixed in a pot). If you're using ready mixed paint (recommended), you could squeeze a little bit of green straight onto the lid or plate.
3. You could either hold the card or construction paper down, tape it with masking tape or teach them to hold it down.
4. Prepare your child and the area for mess. Then simply stamp and print all over the paper for St Patricks Day craft fun!

Rainbow Colouring

If you have any crayons, coloured pencils or felt tip pens (markers) that are not chunky, use those. Demonstrate holding a few colours at a time, as you colour. Your toddler may like to see how many he can colour with too.

St. Patrick's Day Songs

Red and yellow and pink and green
Purple and orange and blue
I can sing a rainbow,
sing a rainbow,
sing a rainbow too.

Listen with your eyes,
Listen with your ears,
and sing everything you see,
I can sing a rainbow,
sing a rainbow,
sing along with me.

Red and yellow and pink and green,
Purple and orange and blue,
I can sing a rainbow,
sing a rainbow,
sing a rainbow too!

St. Patrick’s Day is Here

Tune: Farmer in the Den (Dell)

St. Patrick’s Day is here
St. Patrick’s Day is here
Let’s all clap and dance a jig
St. Patrick’s Day is here

Tactile St. Patrick's Day Activities

This will have to be a closely supervised toddler activity and works best in a quiet room. Find small containers that are made for different materials, such as a wooden bowl, glass jar, basket, ceramic mug, tin and a plastic beaker. Collect a variety of coins and count them together. Small children love handling coins, especially the heavier ones like £1 and £2 coins.

Let her explore and experiment with the coins and containers. This is an excellent opportunity to introduce the new vocabulary of the coins, materials, containers and prepositions (in, out, beside, next to, etc.). Also focusing your child's attention on the variety of sounds the coins make as they're dropped in the different pots will help him to distinguish the differences in the phonic sounds later (necessary for literacy).

If you like this toddler activity you may like to take a look at more free toddler games.

Find 'Rainbows' in Bubbles

This is a great outdoor game for the children, especially toddlers! You can find commercial bubble mixture easily in stores but it's more fun (and educational) to make it yourself with your child. The bubble solution that makes longer-lasting and bigger bubbles contains glycerin which you can find in bottles at drug stores or supermarkets quite inexpensively. Mix 2 tablespoons of liquid dish soap with 1 cup of water, and if you can get the glycerin, add a tablespoon of that. Mix the day before use for best results. Find bubble wands from shops (stores) or use hula hoops in a paddling pool to create big bubbles.

Have a Green Day

Even though it's part of our society for preschoolers to "know their colours" it is a very abstract concept. Keep in mind that, with all the many shades of the same colour, it's harder to learn than it first appears.

This St. Patrick's Day activity is a perfect way for a toddler to absorb and link many different shades of green to that one word in fun ways throughout the day. You can focus on as many or as few green things as you like - just continually point them out to your toddler. Feel free to substitute green for another colour on any other day as a colour learning activity.

Here are some green suggestions:

• Wear something green, of course
• Eat green food
• Go on green hunts around the house, community, park or even in books
• Do St. Patrick's Day crafts. The simplest way is to let toddlers use a variety of green art media on a large sheet of construction paper. Click here for more toddler art ideas.
• Play with green playdough, water, shaving foam or spaghetti.
  Click here for more tactile activities.
• If you're feeling brave you could add a little green paint to bubble mixture, but it does get messy.

I hope you have fun with these St Patrick's Day activities, and a Happy St Patrick's Day to you and yours!

Jig from St. Patrick's Day Activities to Seasonal Toddler Activities