Montessori Inspired Trays for St. Patrick’s Day

Are you observing St. Patrick’s Day? We do! It’s usually one of the most colorful time in Ireland, where everyone is just so happy and festive.  Anyway, with all the green and rainbow decors around, I’m preparing Montessori working trays for Vito as we approach the celebration of St. Patrick, the patron saint of Ireland.  Mavi will be doing a lot of work for St. Patrick’s in his school so I spared him from this.  My aim here is to introduce Vito to the symbols of the celebration and he’ll be exploring these in our activities.

1.  Practice counting using our rainbow counting cards and gold coins.

To know more on how we use cards and counters, read here.  You can get the rainbow cards free from the blog and the golden coins are available in Amazon (Amscan Lucky Saint Patrick's Day Green & Gold Coins).

2. Making rainbow necklaces to enhance fine motor skills and hand-eye coordination.

We are using Melissa and Doug Lacing Beads in this activity.

3.  Introducing the symbols of St. Patrick’s Day to Vito.

I’m using the 3 Part Cards (3 period lesson) in introducing the symbols of St. Patrick’s Day to Vito.  We’ve been seeing a lot of decors now and Vito constantly asks about the things that he sees.  This activity will formally introduce him to popular icons of St. Patrick’s Day.

4.  St. Patrick's Themed Grid Games.

Vito always enjoys our grid games using a die (FOAM DICE DOT) and counters, so we’ll do it again this time.  The counters are actually erasers ( St. Patrick's Day Eraser) which I purchased from a local shop but you can have something similar from here.  Download a copy of our grid game mats here.

5.  Writing practice of letters s, p, d, and i.

Vito is now obsessed with letters, singing the song and always pretending to form/write letters.  So we’ll practice writing letters s, p, d and i using a green rice tray and Montessori Sandpaper Letters.

6.  Exploring the colors of the Rainbow.

We’ll explore the colors of the rainbow and will simply paint a printed outline image using red, blue, and yellow with Qtips.  Now, in this activity, I’ll introduce the concept of color mixing with only 3 colors, we can produce green, orange, and purple.  When it comes to finger painting and qtips, we are using Giotto Be Be Ex Finger Paint Set .  These are nontoxic and dermatologically tested paints which I discovered when we were still living in mainland Europe. 

7.  Learning about the colors of Irish flag.

We’ll be using our Montessori Color Tablets and I will let Vito combine tablets so he can form the exact colors of the flag.

8.  Cutting strips with St. Patrick’s Day icons.

9.  Letter matching between big and small letters.

I will write the big letters in the printed shamrock, small letters in the dot stickers, then Vito will match them.

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