Little kids love all holidays, even if they’re too young to understand the full meaning of these holidays yet. As the adult, you can help them to learn to enjoy every holiday, including St. Patrick’s Day, by teaching them simple and fun arts and crafts projects.
1. Handprint Shamrocks
What you will need:
-White paper
-Green paint
-Crayons, colored pencils, or markers
Start by placing a piece of white paper on a flat surface. You may need to weigh it down with something. Then paint the child’s fists with green paint. You can either use a paint brush or spread the paint onto a paper plate and allow them to stamp their fists into the paint. Making their hands into a heart shape (or fists but the more like a heart shape the more effective) have them stamp their hands onto the paper. Help them to carefully remove their hands. Then reapply the paint and make another heart-shaped hand stamp to the side and then again on the other side creating three leaves on the shamrock. Once dry, the kids can draw on the picture adding a stem to the clover, creating a field in the background, or with your help writing Happy St. Patrick’s Day.
2. Paper Bowl Leprechaun Hats
What you will need:
-Small paper bowls (or styrofoam or plastic)
-Green paint, green markers, or green crayons
-Hole punch
-String
-Scissors
Who wouldn’t want to pretend to be a leprechaun on St. Patrick’s Day? A costume would be nice, why not a simple costume hat? Paint or color the small bowls green. Once dry, take the hole punch and punch one hole on each side. Add string that can be adjusted to hold the hat on to the child’s head when worn. Simple as that, the kids have their own leprechaun hats and can have fun pretending to be leprechauns.
3. Tissue Paper Shamrock
What you will need:
-Green tissue paper
-Glue
-Green construction paper
-Marker
-Scissors
Prepare squares of tissue paper in advance by cutting up a sheet of green tissue paper into small pieces. Then take green tissue paper and draw a shamrock shape. Now provide the toddler with these prepared parts and some glue. Then they are to glue one piece of tissue paper at a time onto the shamrock shape. It may be easier to put some glue on a small paper plate so they can simply dip the paper into it rather than handling a whole bottle of glue. This is a great project for working on hand to eye coordination and makes for a pretty piece of art in the end.
4. Paper Plate Rainbow
-Paper plate
-Scissors
-Crayons, colored pencils, or markers
Cut a paper plate in half and then cut into the shape of a rainbow. Provide the young children with coloring supplies and show them an example of a rainbow, whether via a picture or your own completed paper plate rainbow. Encourage them to mimic the color sequence, but it’s okay if they don’t get it exactly. The whole point is to have fun with lots of colors and create their own rainbow. For a festive St. Patrick’s Day touch, you could provide a coloring page of a pot of gold for them to place at the end of their rainbow.
5. Laced Shamrock
-Green cardstock
-Scissors
-Pencil
-Hole punch
-Yarn
A project that is meant to sharpen the skills of the hands, a laced shamrock celebrates the holiday while encouraging hand to eye coordination. Make a shamrock out of a green piece of cardstock (or whatever material you have on hand). Then punch holes along the rim and cut a length of yarn long enough to be strung through the entire piece (you’ll need to test it out to get the length right). Then give the prepared shamrock and piece of yarn to the toddler and show them how to lace it through. This is great preparation for learning to lace their shoes and other such tasks. Plus it’s fun and they’ll have a cute St. Patrick’s Day decoration in the end.
