Sunday, March 30, 2014

Europe - St. Patrick's Day Fun


We continued our European journey to Ireland in honor of St. Patrick's Day. We started by learning a little about St. Patrick himself, and finding Ireland on the globe.

I printed some sequence cards to go along with a YouTube video about St. Patrick and the celebration of St. Patrick's Day. We watched the video a couple of times, and then I paused the video after each section to give M time to put the sequence cards in order. When she finished, she retold the story using the sequence cards as a guide.


We also sang this cute counting song about 5 Little Leprechauns. M liked removing the leprechauns when they disappeared.

We've been focusing on a lot of Practical Life activities lately, so I designed some St. Patrick's Day - themed trays that would help work on developing those skills. 

Tweezing Gold

M used tweezers to pick up tiny gold beads and put them in the holes of a spice bottle. She found this activity challenging, but was able to complete it. She really liked shaking the "gold" back out of the bottle when she was finished.


Hole Punch Shamrock

I printed a picture of a shamrock with several white circles all over. I showed M how to use the circle hole punch to punch the green paper. She liked using the hole punch, but wasn't interested in gluing the circles onto the shamrock. I finished one to show her an example, and she decided she'd just take mine to hang on the wall instead of finishing her own - haha.



Over the Rainbow

I printed a picture of a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow. I used a sharpie to draw 5 dots along each color of the rainbow. M used the tweezers to place a matching colored pony bead on top of each dot.


Making Green

This was definitely one of M's favorite activities! She used a pipette to mix blue and yellow colored water in the wells of her tray. She repeated this activity over and over and over. There were lots of extensions that we explored - How many drops of water can fit in a well before it overflows? What happens if you add more blue? More yellow? Which shade of green is darker or lighter?


Pouring Green

M is really interested in pouring liquids right now. She's getting better and has fewer spills than she used to. This was just a basic liquid transfer tray with two pitchers. I added a few drops of green food coloring to the water for a little surprise.

I threw in a Sensorial activity for good measure:

Visual Discrimination - Leprechaun Pictures

I printed this set of leprechaun pictures (actually for a dominoes set) from Kids Can Have Fun. I showed M how to line up the pictures to find the matching pairs. 



Painting Rainbows

I guess all of the talk about leprechauns and rainbows stuck in her head. This is the painting M created at The Children's Museum. She painted it entirely on her own - flowers growing in the grass with the sun and a rainbow overhead. She was very proud of it. I was glad I got a picture before we left, because the wind ripped it out of my hand on the way out of the museum and the wet paint ended up all over my sweater (you can imagine what happened to the painting after that...).


Baking Irish Soda Bread

We followed this recipe for "Amazingly Easy Irish Soda Bread," which was in fact amazingly easy. I don't remember what M was doing (probably working on her color mixing tray), but I made this pretty much on my own. I somehow forgot to buy raisins, so our soda bread was made with Craisins instead - delicious! I called her over to help cut the "X" in the top to let the Devil out of the bread.



Shamrock Sundaes

We went to the beach with my parents for a few days, including St. Patrick's Day. The hotel offered shamrock sundaes to celebrate - yum!


We've had a lot of fun learning about Europe! Check out the rest of our European Unit, and the other continents we've learned about on our Journey Around the World.



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