St. Patrick's Day for Preschoolers - Part 2

Is St. Patrick's Day celebrated in your area? Growing up in Quebec, I remember hearing about it a tad bit but not much. Maybe if I had gone to the big city I would have seen something but overall, until I moved to the United States, St. Patrick's Day never seemed observed very much. Needless to say, it went by completely unnoticed in Germany as well...except for my Irish dinner of course! :)

Shamrock Grading - Math

If you can't tell already, I love felt and creating educational materials with it. For St. Patrick's Day, I prepared this very simple math activity consisting of five shamrocks. All five were in a different shade of green and all five were cut in a different size. The activity here was a grading one. Adrian could grade by shade of green (lightest to darkest) but also by size (smallest to biggest). Finally, we graded by size AND shade simultaneously starting by the biggest which was also the darkest. Adrian loved that combination the best. Original idea : Stay At Home Educator. Templates: Rubber Stamping.

Buttoning / Unbuttoning a Leprechaun Vest
Practical Life

Well, technically, it is my husband's vest but for the week, it was called a Leprechaun's vest! :) Adrian's fine motor skills could use some help in the buttoning / unbuttoning department and since learning to button and unbutton on one's self can be challenging, I presented it here on a bigger piece of clothing, hung on the back of a chair. The vest was ideal as it had a buckle to tighten it up on the back. It still gave Adrian a bit of trouble but with a bit of practice and time, he'll get the hang of it. His hands just need some more strengthening. 

Shamrock with Lentils - Art & Fine Motor

Fine Motor skills! I just have a hard time not including activities involving these on a daily basis. During St. Patrick's Day Week, I printed a beautiful yet simple shamrock template, put a glue bottle out and a plate filled with lentils. The task was simple yet tedious: cover all the black lines with glue and lentils. How beautiful is that? And I bet it didn't take as long as you think either! :)

The Harp & Claude Debussy - Music

The harp and Ireland? Yes. Debussy and Ireland? Wait...What? I know it sounds strange but there is a relation I promise. The fact of the matter is, I wanted to include the harp this week. What better week anyway, right? We talked about the harp itself, how the harpist plays it, what it is made of, how big it really is and we watched a video of someone playing the harp (You Tube is wonderful!). We also played a little game of "Harp?" or "No harp"? with musical sound bytes involving harps, pianos, violins, etc. 

Now Debussy entered the picture with the harp because in many people's head, he really is the one who made the harp famous by writing pieces including such beautiful movements for the harp. As such, I thought I'd include our first composer study. We talked about Debussy himself, listened to his famous "Danse sacree et profane" written in part for the harp. I found a very nice video of two young harpists on YouTube playing this piece (A. Andruschenko & A. Sadikova) and we listened to it while we created our lentil shamrock. Debussy is very soothing. When the piece was over, I put on other famous compositions by Debussy as we wrapped up our day. I am hoping to include a new composer every month and hopefully link him/her in with our unit as I did  here.

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Indoor Rainbow

Well that one worked...a bit. Our mirror was so tiny that we ended up with a tiny rainbow Adrian could barely make out. As such, no picture! :) If you do happen to have a bigger mirror, make it shine! Escapade Direct has instructions.

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This week, I'm happily linking up to

Montessori Monday, The Kids Co-Op, Show-and-Share Saturday, Link & Learn, TGIF, Share it Saturday, Mom's Library, The Sunday Showcase,  Tuesday Tots, Preschool Corner &5K, We Made That.