With St. Patrick’s Day right around the corner, I wanted to share a few very simple activities you could do at home with toddlers! I must admit, I have never been a big St. Patrick’s Day fan. It is definitely not a holiday I get super excited about or even decorate the home for, but Easter feels a bit far off and our son is in fact more Irish than he is Japanese, so I wanted to do a couple fun and easy activities.
1. Shamrock Marble Art
If you have read my blog even a bit, you know that Hudson is the definition of a crazy, wild, and active boy. Art projects are NOT his thing. With that in mind, I thought it would be fun to do a simple shamrock art project that we could give to family. One of the reasons I love all the different holidays is that it allows for an opportunity to give a few words of thanks to those we love. I know St. Paddy’s Day might seem like not an obvious holiday for that kind of thing, but I think it is!
Last year, we did a shamrock footprint project with H’s little, baby feet. Lance had a race on the 17th, so it made a cute gift to wish him good luck for his race. This year, I decided to do marble art shamrocks. It seemed like the perfect art project for my active and ball-obsessed toddler.
It is so simple. I just cut out shamrock shapes using a shamrock he had made in his toddler class as my stencil. We bought a bag of marbles (be very careful to not let your toddler play with these), a tube of green pain, and green glitter glue all at the Dollar Store. That is it! $3. There are many reasons I love the dollar store, but it it the best spot for kid craft supplies. I used to spend a billion dollars at Michael’s. There is a time and place for these type of craft stores, but when we are just doing fun, little art projects at home, the Dollar Store is my place.
All you have to do for this project is get a big container, put the paper shamrock in, and add a few drops of paint and the marbles. I learned my lesson from the first one and put WAY too much paint and WAY too many marbles. The best ones were the ones with minimal drops of paint and just 4-5 marbles.
They turned out really fun. I love how each one is so unique. They will make the perfect cards to give to our family!
In terms of Hudson’s experience, he still was not super into it. He had more fun standing on the big container and throwing his stuffed “peas” at me. But hey, this is just my kid. I think most toddler-aged kids would love this project. It is a fun one for them to get some energy out!
2. Read St. Patrick’s Themed Books
I love checking out a ton of holiday-themed library books. I could literally only find one book on St. Patrick’s Day at our local library: The Night Before St. Patrick’s Day by Natasha Wing. It is a fun one that uses the familiar rhyming of ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas. Again, I just don’t get too excited over leprechauns and the color green and corned beef hash, but this one book is a fun way to read a themed-holiday book for the month of March.
3. Sensory Play with Lucky Charms
Hudson is super into helping me cook in the kitchen. He loves pouring things into different containers and he also loves to sort. While obviously not the most nutritious cereal choice, I thought it would be fun to give him some cups, spoons, and containers to play with Lucky Charms. We are currently working on our colors, so I used construction paper colors to help work on sorting the different marshmallows by color. Again, super simple, but a fun activity to do after nap time when you have some time to kill before dinner.
Reality check: depending on the age of toddler, this might look more like them excitedly eating marshmallows as you sort by color. Activities like these can feel pointless when it seems like your toddler is not quite ready to follow directions and fully participate; however, I fully believe talking to them about the colors and modeling how to sort as they stuff their faces with rainbows is still better than not. Right?!
4. Find a Local St. Patrick’s Day Parade or Event
I grew up in Hermosa Beach and for as long as I can remember, we would go to our local St. Patrick’s Day parade. I have no idea if this is a thing in other cities, but it is in Hermosa. It has been a few years since I have been, but we are planning on bringing Hudson down to it this year. If you are local, here is the event’s information.
Okay that is all I got! Super simple, easy things to do with toddlers and really any-aged kid this St. Patrick’s Day that are budget-friendly and not a ton of extra work for you. I will say, the art project was a bit more messy than I like for a typical Thursday afternoon, but hey we got beautiful shamrocks out of it. Worth the mess.
This Mama Needs Grace 