3 Great Shamrock & Rainbow Activities for St. Patrick's Day!

Getting your centers ready for St. Patrick's Day? Check out these awesome activities and crafts shared over at Rockabye Butterfly! Use one, use them all - your kiddos are sure to have a great time as they brush up on color recognition, build fine motor skills, learn about ordering, etc.

Homemade Lime Kool-Aid Play Dough

A fabulous sensory activity for your students, the green yummy smelling dough paired with shamrock cookie cutters makes a great addition to your holiday plans! You can grab the dough recipe over at Rockabye Butterfly and, perhaps, alter it to play with different scents. For example, instead of Kool-Aid you might try green food coloring and mint essential oil.

Heart Cookie Cutter Shamrock Craft

This is an oldie, but a goodie! Using a heart cookie cutter and green paint, as students make prints of the cookie cutters, invite them to arrange the prints in a group to create clover shapes. And encourage them to explore working with the prints!

Use the tip of their finger on the wet paint to brush the excess paint toward the middle of the shape.

Layer the cookie cutter prints.

Slide or rub the cookie cutter on the paper (making sure to slide each print the same direction so that the clover shape is still visible).

Paint Chip Rainbows

This activity provides a great opportunity for your kiddos to practice with color recognition, ordering, and matching! Simply draw a rainbow shape onto a piece of white craft paper, using markers to add a colored dot or line in each section to help guide your kiddos as they place their paint chips. Finally, have students work one section at a time, adding a line of glue and covering the wet paste with the appropriate colored paint chips. [NOTE: You could also use squares of tissue paper/construction paper, dyed pasta, craft puffs, etc.]

The best part - these are just three of the six activities shared over at Rockabye Butterfly! Be sure to check out the full post for more great ideas!