Our St. Patrick’s Day Tot School fun continues with this adorable Smash a Shamrock activity. These activities were planned for Tot School – 28 months.
See how much fun you can have with just a few items for this St. Patrick’s Day with your toddler.
Tot School St. Patrick’s Day Activities
We’ve had a delightful learning week with a visit to the farm to feed the animals, a play date with friends, and lots of gardening outside. The favorite activity of the week – you’d never guess!
We call it
SMASH-A-SHAMROCK!
Playdough Shamrock Activity
Math: I love that it teaches sequencing, number sense, shapes, and vocabulary, and allows for developing fine motor skills! What I might say to my 2-year-old is italicized!
1. Roll a ball
“Let’s roll a small green ball.”
2. Roll another ball and count how many you have.
“Do you have 3 balls?” “Not yet, we need one more!”
3. Roll another ball and count how many you have. (touch each ball as you count)
“1, 2, 3, …Do you have 3 balls? – YES!!! It’s time to SMASH A SHAMROCK!”
4. Smash the balls with the palm of your hands and make a shamrock.
“Ha, ha, ha. That was fun, do you want to make another shamrock? Yes? What will we need to do?”
REPEAT!
(He wanted to make shamrock after shamrock after shamrock – I got bored way before he did!)
Green Balloon Basketball
Teaching toddlers really doesn’t require any fancy equipment. We really had a blast this week with just the simple tools of paper, crayons, play dough, and balloons (only use with adult supervision) We (I put we because I play too!) played “Keep the balloon high,” a game where we just hit the balloon high up. When the balloon touches the ground, we say “too low,” and throw it back up!
Then we played catch and balloon basketball with the laundry basket as our hoop. Keeping in the spirit of the holiday this weekend, we used a green balloon!
Handprint Shamrock Craft
A friend of mine brought this cute little handprint craft to our toddler play date. Nicholas had fun painting his hands and wanted to do his version of finger painting. 3 prints were not enough.
I am going to try and do some more finger painting with him this weekend and may try the edible version! I think she purchased hers through Oriental Trading Company, but this could easily be done with construction paper too!
And last, but not least, I was so inspired by Kim’s eat the rainbow post that I cut up a bunch of fruit and put it in a small bowl. I gave pretty little plates to my kids and had them make their own personal rainbows. We topped it off with a cloud of whipped cream. The kids were on cloud nine! They thought this was a great snack!
For more St. Patrick’s Day Activities for your child, you may enjoy these:
I just love the 'script'. Lots of great learning here and fun! Featuring on this weeks Kid's Co-Op on Triple T Mum 🙂
I love this idea I've got to try it next time we have some green playdough laying around.
Thank you for linking up to Tuesday Tots
I really love this idea. It's so simple and easy! I'll absolutly be doing this with my little one!
Thanks Maryanne, it is the little things in life that sometimes we have the most fun with! My green was left over from a Christmas batch that we made with pepermint tea and pepermint extract, and it was still very minty!
Have fun! We are looking forward to the weekend too!
I LOVE your "smash a shamrock" activity! We may make up a batch of green play dough just for that purpose tomorrow – thanks for such a fun idea!!!
We are in for a rain soaked weekend. I am making some green playdough for sure. My boys will really love the "smash a shamrock" activity. All of these activities are so fun. I can't wait for the weekend.