Happy St. Patrick's Day

Happy St. Patrick's Day!  

May the Luck of the Irish Always be Yours!

A couple of weeks ago I went to my very first Pinterest Party and it was super fun to craft with my sorority sisters!  It was an Kappa Delta Alumnae event and since our sorority's colors are green and white and our annual big philanthropy event is called called the Shamrock Project making a St. Patrick's Day wreath was especially appropriate!

I really loved how one of our inspiration pins had layers of embellishment and tried to recreate a similar look and feel. My bow is bugging me a little, and I just noticed that the original has the tails tucked in.  I think I'm off to try that!

St. Patrick's Day Math: Using Coin Manipulatives

St. Patrick's Day has built in math manipulatives, the gold coins in the pot at the end of the rainbow lend themselves to hands-on activities. Now is a great time to stock up, as gold coins like the ones above are already marked down. Buy several sets for a center and you'll be able to use them in your classroom for years.

In many kindergarten classes, students are working on simple addition. Place a set of number flash cards and the coins in your center and have students take turns building simple addition or subtraction problems. Extend the activity by having students record the problems they make on a sheet of paper.

Variation:

You can also provide large foam dice instead of the number cards. Students will roll one at a time to get a number to add to their problem. You can differentiate for struggling learners by having those students roll the dice and count out the same number of coins.

Patterns:

My school had a die cut machine in the work room, another suggestion is to die cut out shamrocks and have the students use them along with the coins to make simple patterns, like ABAB. You can also use picture cards for the shamrocks, like I did in this previously shared activity.

Classroom Store:

Shopping is another great way to use the coins. Provide several items students can pretend to buy and lable each a price. Have each student pick a number card, this is a good time to use larger teen and twenties. Each child counts out the corresponding number of coins. They can then use the coins make purchases.

Get them to practice their handwriting by having each student completes their own "receipt" by writing down each item they want to purchase, the amount for each, and then write the total. This center benefits from having a parent volunteer supervise.

If you are interested in preschool curriculum, check out my other blog ABC & 123 today. We're giving away a complete letter of the week alphabet program.

Lucky Wall Hanging

This St. Patrick's wall hanging, was loosely inspired by the good luck sign I saw at Red Heads Craft More Fun. I had planned on it being a lot more like the original but it evolved over time, as I made adjustments for the supplies I had on hand.

To begin with, I realized I didn't have any similar extra frames and then I decided I really wanted to incorporate a favorite photo from ER's first St. Patty's Day. I had Brad cut a piece of foam core into a 9X9 square and then add a window slightly smaller than 4X6.

I covered the foam core with patterned paper and attached the picture.
Then I cut a sheet of coordinating cardstock with scalloped paper edger scissors and adhered that too.

I created the crepe paper ruffle border by measuring out a strip of crepe paper three times the length of each side, so roughly 27 inches. Accordion fold it and then run a needle with embroidery floss through the entire stack.

Gently open the accordian folds and stretch the crepe paper strip out to the length of one side of your hanging. Fluff and arrange as desired and then attach with double sided tape, a tape runner works best. Repeat for each side. Then I just punched holes for hanging with my crop-a-dile and added a sentiment I cut out with my Circut.

I am thinking about adding a bit of bling with some gold glitter glue along the edges of the border but I only have silver on hand so that might not happen. Voila, a simple and quick project done very inexpensively.

PS: It's actually really nice and spring colored, the photos are dark and I was feeling too lazy to fix them on PS Elements.


Shared at: Categorically Crafting at Someday Crafts, and

St. Patrick's Day Activities: Shamrock Slap & Patterning

I recently put together two very simple card games, using clip art, to play with ER. Since I love having everything organized neatly, I even made two crayon sized boxes out of cardstock to hold them.
To create Shamrock Slap:

• Make a table in a word processing program with three columns and three rows.
• Size it to take up the entire page, you will end up with nine boxes.
• Add a letter to each box or program the boxes with whatever skill you are working on.
• I used the letters in ER's first name and printed out the page five times.
• Add a shamrock clip art to one page and print out 1-2 copies.
• Cut pages into cards. I rounded the edges, just because I thought they'd look cuter.
• Shuffle the cards to combine.
• Note: Use cardstock to print the cards are sturdier. Cards can also be made by writing on index cards and using shamrock stickers.

I apologize for the cat hairs in the pictures, unfortunately vacuuming day was after I took the pictures!
To play Shamrock Slap:

• Stack the cards face down, into the play pile.
• Player one picks up a card and says the name of the letter on it.
• If it's correctly identified, the card goes in a pile face up next to the play pile.
• An incorrectly identified card gets placed on the bottom of the play pile.
• Play continues until a shamrock card is picked up and placed into second pile.
• The first place to slap the card wins the entire pile.
• Play continues until all the cards are gone or no shamrock cards are left in the play pile.
• The player with the most cards wins.

This game is very simplistic and my daughter really likes it. She giggles a lot and loves slapping the pile. Yes, the player putting down the shamrock card usually gets to slap it, but that's okay with me. I just wanted something quick and easy to play. Plus she's usually successful and enjoys playing. For me, that's the whole point, to make repetitious learning fun. St. Patrick's Day Themed Patterning: Since I was already making shamrock clip art cards I decided to make a few more stacks using additional seasonal icons. Mine are all part of my word processing program, but an image search online should yield many similar clip arts you can use. Right now we've been practicing extending patterns. I begin it and then ER continues until the cards run out. We've made ABAB patterns and ABCABC patterns (above) and AABBAABB patterns (below). The next step is to have her make her own patterns independently, she's pretty good at ABAB. Using 3D manipulatives would be preferable but this is a nice and inexpensive way to change up the activity for a wide range of thematic units. It's also another simple way to make another connection with new vocabulary, like leprechaun, that are also a part of the seasonal books we are reading. After St. Patrick's Day I can remove the leprechaun and pot of gold and replace them with flowers and bunnies and use them longer.

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Envelope Mini Book Tutorial: Lucky

Happy St. Patrick's Day Everyone!

I hope you've all got green on! I like to focus on the tradition of feeling lucky today, and wanted to share this quick and simple project I made to help remind me of how blessed I am and how it really is just the basics like family, friends, and your own special place to call home that are important in life.
After Christmas one year, I bought two packages of premade cards and envelopes at a huge discount. The card dimensions are 5.5X4 inches, this is a standard premade size. I had visions of sending beautifully handmade cards the following year. Things never go according to plan, so they've sat in with my crafting supplies forgotten until I cleaned things up. I realized they'd be just the thing to help me make this envelope mini book.You will need five envelopes and two and half cards. Yes this means that you will have more cards left than envelopes but spare cards are useful for a whole bunch of things, like gluing or sewing up two sides to make pockets for scrapbook pages.

Fold each envelope back like this. Lay them down one on top of another like this. This will give you an idea of how they'll go together. Imagine you are going to lick the first envelope and then set another one down right on top of it folded the same way and facing the same direction.Here is another way to visualize it. These two have already been glued together. If you lay them down this is how they'll look. The one on the left, has had it's flap glued to the second envelope on the right. You can use glue or go the old fashioned route and lick them. If you lick make sure you immediately stick it to the following envelope or they won't stay together very well.

VERY IMPORTANT: Put glue only on the area that you would normally lick to seal. Otherwise your envelopes will be glued shut and that wouldn't be very good at all☺ You want to be able to slide things in and out of your pockets.

Remember those card blanks? Normally you'd fold them in half to make a card. This time cut them in half using the prefolded edge as a cutting guide. Cut five one for each pocket that you just made out of the envelopes.

Cut patterned paper to fit on the fronts, I cut mine to 5X3.5 inches, this gives me a half inch border on each side. You can simplify things and skip this step. You'll be covering most of the patterned paper with journaling, but you will have to adjust your margins from my dimensions.

I did mine on white cardstock within a text box measuring 4.5X3 inches. This again gives me a half inch border all around and looks very pretty. Using a text box in a word processing program also helps me because I print it out with the thin border around it and that tell me exactly where to trim around the journaling.

When picking your patterned paper a little print works best since you'll be covering most of it, this way parts of the pattern will show and be recognizable, in this case as polka dots.

Cut the tabs for your cards, mine are 1.5 inch circles. I used my circle cutter by Martha Stewart.

Glue on circle tabs and patterned paper. To get the spacing correct, I attached in this order: top tab, bottom tab, middle tab, remaining tabs. Add title stickers to tabs.

This is when you'd also add your journaling boxes on top of the patterned paper. I chose to hightlight five things that make me feel lucky, but elected not to share the journaling as it's private. Then I picked out five pictures that represent each thing.

Add your pictures to the backside, so that the different orientations wouldn't distract from the design. I thought it would bother me if the letters and pictures weren't in the same direction. This way I can add my journaling cards, with the text in the same direction as the title stickers. You turn over the card to see the picture.

While writing this tutorial I realized I forgot to take a picture of the next step, which is to slide your cards into your pockets. I think you can get an idea of what that would look like from the finished project pictures.

Now it's time to make your covers. You will need chipboard cut to the size of your envelopes Lay it on top of a piece of patterned paper about half an inch or three quarters larger on each side. The amount of over hang is up to you, just make sure you have enough to fold up and over.
Crease each side, clip each corner as shown. Do not cut it right against the corner, cut a little bit above the corner or your corners won't be completely covered when the paper is folded up. The first time you do this cut farther out than you think you need too. You can make adjustments as you fold up, but as they say once cut off it's gone, so error on the side of caution.

I always start by folding up the longer side, I have no idea if this makes it easier or turn out better, I am just a creature of habit. Fold up and glue down.

Fold up other sides, check to see if the ends come to points, if not very carefully trim a little bit down. Fold up and glue down. In most cases you would then cut another piece of paper to slightly smaller than the size of the cover and glue on to cover up the center. You do not need to do that for this project. No one will see that.

I used double sided patterned paper with this project. The inside cards have the polka dot side and the covers have the striped side. I love how the two patterns are different but work together because they match perfectly.

Glue the front cover to the first envelope. This one will have the V shaped opening facing up. Then glue the back cover to the envelope with the last flap on it.

I had intented on adding a white ribbon to tie it up with, but found I'd used mine all up. Oh well, this one is pretty flat because I didn't add any other embellishements to the inside cards so stays together well without it.

If I had, had ribbon I'd have attached by sandwiching it in between the last envelope and back cover and had it come up over the top and around the bottom to tie in the middle. In stead, I used this cute little leprechaun from my supply stash. I think he added just the right festive finishing touch to my quick and simple design. If you make your own version, let me know because I'd love to see it.Featured on One Pretty Thing and shared at: Blue Cricket Design and

St. Patrick's Day Math Activities

Here are two activities I used when I was teaching in Santa Fe, NM with kindergarten through second graders. I thought I'd share them now, so if you want to play them with your kids you'll have time before the holiday. These activities can be changed for any theme, just change the shape from a shamrock to one appropriate to your studies or change the crayon color being used in the race game. These were made into St. Patrick's Day activities because that's the time of year we got to comparison words!
Lucky Shamrock Numbers

Learning Objective: Number Comparison: greater than & less than, Numeral Writing

Materials Needed for Each Pair of Students:
Lucky Shamrock Board
2 Pennies
Score Sheet

Procedure:

1. Both students flip their coins, the one with heads up goes first.
2. Lay Lucky Shamrock Board on the ground, standing above the board Player 1 drops their penny from waist height onto the board.
3. Player 2 does the same thing
4. Both players look at where their coins landed, the player with a coin on or nearer the higher number wins that turn.
5. Both players record the number their coin landed on, on the score sheet, and circle the higher number
6. Play thirteen times, the player with more rounds won wins.

To Make the Shamrock Board: Glue shamrock shapes onto a large piece of construction paper, write a number on each one. Laminate for durability. You can modify this game by the numbers you chose to put on the shamrocks.

Modifications: I used this activity with my second graders by giving each student two coins. Player 1 dropped both coins at the same time and then added or subtracted them, depending on which skill we were practicing. Player 2 did the same. Then the two solutions were compared, with the greater numeral being the winner of that round.

Shamrock Race

Learning Objective: Number Comparison: greater than & less than, Numeral Writing

Materials Needed for Each Pair of Students:
2 Playing Grids
2 Green Crayons
2 Dice
2 Score Cards

Procedure:

1. Both students roll their own dice, the higher number goes first.
2. Player 1 rolls their dice.
3. Player 2 rolls their dice.
4. The player with a higher number gets to color in that many squares on their grid.
5. Both players record the numbers rolled, and circle the higher number
6. Take turns playing until one of the players fill their grid.

To Make the Playing Grid:
I opened a new document in MS, adjusted the margins to .5 inches on each side. Made a table with 15 columns and 20 rows. Then auto fit both to fill the page. The one in the photograph is my master copy from my files, I'd photocopy it for my students. You can also use large graph paper or decrease the number of columns and rows to make the squares bigger if your child can't color in such small squares or does not yet have the attention span for a long game.

These have been shared at:

Storybook Art - Green Pepper Shamrock Prints

Now that it's March, it's time to crack out the St. Patty's Day books. Today we read The Luckiest Leprechaun. ER liked it because one of the main characters is a dog and she's all about puppies right now. This one has the typical grouchy leprechaun who's world is turned upside down by a dog named Lucky who accidentally digs up part of his home beneath a tree in a park. Short version: the leprechaun can't get rid of the Lucky, until one day she chases away a Professor who's trying to prove the existance of leprechauns. The leprechaun finally realizes that friendship is more important than gold.

I liked this book because it's really about the importance of friendship and has some very general references to St. Patrick's day folklore, such as who leprechauns are in the first place, which she'd never heard about before.
For our storytime art, we made green bell pepper shamrock prints. Cut one bell pepper in half, dip in a shallow container filled with a little green paint, and then made prints on our paper. They do kind of look like shamrocks, if you think of it as abstract art! Ours even had four little sides so it was a lucky four leaf clover shamrock. This also ties into our on going color studies. She really enjoyed it too, although they may have looked more like shamrocks before I attempted to add little stems, cause I am not an ar-tist!