Pre-K St Patrick's Day Activities

While we are slowly working our way through some purchased curriculum this year, I decided to also add in some themed activities that either go with the seasons/holidays or go with Archer's interests. Here are some of our St Patrick's Day Themed Activities. Archer is 3.5 but I try to meet him at his skill and interest level.

Eraser addition boxes. This was the first time doing this type of activity and he really enjoyed it. He actually saw the tray and insisted on doing it before I had planned.

We played this spinner addition game together. He had one color coin and I had the other. We took turns spinning and covering up the corresponding number. My plan was to have whoever got rid of their coins first win, but he just wanted to cover them all up.

We printed this Irish flag to color from Little Passports.

St Patrick's Day playdough had some green playdough, green gems, coins, shamrock buttons, a shamrock cookie cutter and some gold nuggets.

Leprechaun's Gold coin counting. I put various amounts of coins in these little cauldrons and had him practice adding them up. He did great as long as I reminded him to start adding with the biggest coins first.

Shamrock hole punch activity from Early Learning Ideas

Shamrock pin punching.

St Patrick's Day word family matching

Digging star pony beads out of  therapy putty. He ended up really enjoying it, so we will definitely be doing it again. I also had a little response worksheet for him after he got them all out.

Lucky Charms sorting/graphing activity. He rarely gets sugary cereal so he LOVED this activity.

St. Patrick's Cuisenaire templates

I had out my folder that had last year's activities and Archer found these 10s frame sheets and wanted to do them.

Syllable counting has been something he's been hesitant to try. He usually does ok, but his lack of confidence makes him resistant. Luckily, he was interested enough to put the little green gems on his syllable worksheet.

Blend Word Cards Initially he wanted to do these cards with his  All About Spelling Tiles. Eventually, he asked if he could write out the whole words on lined paper. I was definitely not going to argue that!

St Patrick's Day Books. He didn't want me to read any of them to him, so he read them on his own.

It's St Patrick's Day
How to Catch a Leprechaun

Clever Tom and the Leprechaun

There Way an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Clover

Pete the Cat and the Great Leprechaun Chase

The Night Before St Patrick's Day

 

St Patrick's Day Literacy Activities

I loved themed activities and my 3 year old loves visually appealing interactive activities. Coming up with hands on math ones is much easier for me than literacy ones. I think this is partially because he's a very "mathy" kid and partially because he is reading at such a high level that a lot of the "age appropriate" ones no longer work. Regardless, I am trying. Here is what I came up with for St. Patrick's Day!

Pot of Gold Word Families

St. Patrick's Day words syllable counting

Beginning blends. You could do these with movable letters or with dry erase markers. We're slowly working our way through  All About Spelling Level 1 and happen to be on blends. Even if we weren't, I figure extra fun practice is always good.

Ending blends. I laminated these and used a dry erase marker.

Print your St. Patrick's Day Literacy Activities Here

St. Patrick's Day Math Activities

As I mentioned in my recent post about the math spinner game, I have been working on creating more hands on math practice for Archer. Here are some of the materials I have made this month for St. Patrick's Day.

Addition boxes may be new to us, but they're certainly not new. I have seen several examples on Pinterest, but never gotten to making them myself. Recently, I found some adorable little St. Patrick's erasers and the little boxes are from the dollar store. I put different amounts of erasers in each box and made a recording sheet in a dry erase sleeve. Archer was immediately drawn to it and insisted on doing all of them, even though I suggested chunking it into a few sessions.

This year we have slowly started working on adding coins. In the past, I have always had him create a certain amount (How can you make $0.22?"). This time, I decided to give him the coins and have him figure out how much money that totaled. I made the little recording sheet to go with it.

I saw this cute idea for hiding things in therapy putty from Differentiated Kindergarten. I used little star pony beads to hide the colors of the rainbow. Then I made a place to put the beads when he dug them out and a results sheet with some basic comparison questions about what he found.

This activity is very similar to the previous one, but I used some Lucky Charms cereal instead. There's a sheet to put the different kinds of marshmallows and then a results sheet for answering questions.

Print the St Patrick's Day Math Activities Here

 

St Patrick's Day Cuisenaire Templates

 

I've been trying to incorporate Cuisenaire Rods more lately. Since we're still in the exploration/familiarization stage with the rods (and probably will be for months, since he's so young), template matching activities seem to work well for us. He enjoys them and they let us have conversations about the rods and how they compare to one another. He also enjoyed the element of counting up each color of rod at the end.

Print the St. Patrick's Cuisenaire Templates HERE

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Gratitude Shamrocks

In February we started a new tradition of putting a heart up on Xander's door every morning until Valentine's Day.  On each heart, I wrote one reason why we love him (thank you Pinterest).  Xander looked forward to seeing the new hearts every day and Archer enjoyed trying to get them off the door.  

For March, I decided to put a shamrock on Xander's door every day until St. Patrick's Day.  However, this time, I am going to have Xander write something for which he feels luck on each one.  This lets me encourage gratitude and also create a fun tradition.

To make it easier, I created this shamrock printable that already has the "I feel lucky because..." printed on each one.  I just needed to print it on green paper and cut it out.  I put them in a little basket with markers and painters tape, so they're all ready to go! You're welcome to download it here.

 If you're interested in other St. Patrick's Day materials, you can download my St. Patrick's Printable Pack here.

St. Patrick's Printables

With St. Patrick's Day just around the corner, I have been going a little nuts pinning fun ideas of things to do with Xander's school.  I know there are a ton of great things out there, which I will be using.  However, I also wanted materials to suit his current skills, so I made some of my own.  It includes spelling, sentence building, some math, and some tracing (still working on getting his fine motor skills to catch up to his cognitive ones).  You're welcome to use any of the pages you'd like.  Print it below!

Print the St Patrick's Day Pack HERE

***Update***
I've also made a tracing page and a pattern matching set you can print from here.

St. Patrick's Day 10s Frames