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JDaniel4s Mom

growing & learning with him

St. Patrick’s Day Tangram Puzzles Challenge

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This set of St. Patrick’s Day tangram puzzles will be great to explore! Children will have fun creating the various St. Patrick’s Day objects on these colorful mats. Two printable tangram sets are included in the set.

This is part of a series of tangram puzzles. Please stop by and check out the STEM Tangrams Puzzles Sets page to see the whole collection.

Getting the St. Patrick’s Day Tangram Puzzle Set Ready

This set is a PDF.   When you download it, you will need to open it with a PDF reader. Acrobat Reader is a popular reader that you can download to use. You probably have it on your computer already.

St. Patrick’s Day Tangram Puzzle SetDownload

If you plan on using the mats and puzzle pieces over and over again you may want to laminate them. Below you will find some laminating supplies I recommend.

The links below are affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.

Building Background Before Exploring the St. Patrick’s Day Tangram Puzzle Set

Before your children explore the St. Patrick’s Day mats, you may want to do one of the following.

Explore Leprechaun Themed Pages

Leprechaun's Hiding Places - Coordinate Map Activity Set

Leprechaun Coordinate Mapping Activity

How to Draw a Leprechaun with an Algorithm Set

Drawing a Leprechaun with an Algorithm

Create a Craft

Make a Celtic Knot

Sing a Rhyme

(Tune: Mary Had a Little Lamb)
I’m a little leprechaun,
Leprechaun, leprechaun,
I’m a little leprechaun,
Who likes to hide my gold!
I dress in green from head to toe,
Head to toe, head to toe,
I dress in green from head to toe,
I wear green all day long!
You’ll never catch me or my gold,
Or my gold, or my gold,
You’ll never catch me or my gold –
I hide it much too well!

Read a Book About St. Patrick’s Day

Your children will have fun learning more about St. Patrick’s Day as they listen or read one of the books below.


The links below are affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.

St Patricks Day Crafts – Leprechaun with Feelings

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 St. Patrick's Day Crafts- Leprechaun with Changing Feelings

It is fun to create a craft with kids that is interactive. They really love that something moves or can be changed on their craft. This leprechaun can change the feeling he is displaying on mouth. He can be happy, sad, or surprised. All kids have to do is turn the disk on the back of his head to change how he is feeling.

This leprechaun craft was shared as part of a Read. Explore.Learn. post I shared a few years ago. It was just one of a variety of activities that were done after reading the book St. Patrick’s Day.  Originally the craft was used to display how the leprechaun was feeling in different parts of the story.

St. Patrick's Day Crafts- Leprechaun with Changing Feelings

I bet your children could do several activities after constructing a leprechaun craft of their own.

  • They could make up their own stories about a leprechaun.
  • You could encourage them to include events in their story that would have the leprechaun displaying each of the feelings.
  • Young children could dictate their story to an adult or tell their story orally.
  • Older children could write their story down.
  • Children could pantomime something that would cause them to have each of these feelings. The actions they act out could be their own or something they think a leprechaun might do.
  • You could read your children a series of reading passages or sentences and have them show you what feeling would go along with what you have read.
  • Feelings can be a hard thing for kids to talk about. This craft might just open a door to your children talking about feelings.

St. Patrick's Day Crafts- Leprechaun with Changing Feelings

St. Patrick’s Day Crafts Directions

We started by cutting out the space that would display the leprechaun’s mouth. That insured that we wouldn’t have something glued on top of it.

Then we picked out scraps of doilies and construction paper to decorate the plate with. The goal was to have a leprechaun with a hat and without a nose. There weren’t specific directions given on how to make it beyond thosee.

Finally small circle was cut out and various expressions were drawn on its edges.

The disk was attached to the  back of the leprechaun with a brass fastener. The brass fastener was attached to the plate where the leprechaun’s nose would be.

St. Patrick's Day Crafts- Leprechaun with Changing Feelings

Here are some other St. Patrick’s Day Crafts and Activities :

Learning Activities with Printables

{Printable} Roll and Color St. Patrick’s Day Pages

Gold Coin Number Mats

 

Cooking Activity

Creating a Snack with Leprechaun Magic Dust

 

Crafts

Creating a Rainbow Place Mat

Simple Sticker Rainbow

Five Little Hand Print Shamrocks Song and Craft

Rainbow Collage

 

Fine Motor Activity

Jumping the Rainbow Game

Making Learning Fun with Rainbows

If you do try any of the above activities or crafts, please leave me a comment below telling me about it  or share a picture of it on my Facebook page.

 

 

 

 

 

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How to Make a Leprechaun Trap

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how to make a leprechaun trap with creation trap ideas

Every year leprechauns spread chaos and leave small green footprints in classrooms and kitchens everywhere! Well, enough is enough! We decided that we needed to create a leprechaun trap to catch the one that visits our house. I thought I would walk you through the steps we went through to create our  trap so, you can create a trap to try to catch the leprechauns that visit you.

Steps for Creating a Leprechaun Trap

Planning

Taking the time to plan just what your leprechaun trap will look like is key. You can have your children draw out a plan on paper. It really doesn’t matter which of these two ways you select. The steps you will need to use to plan will be the same either way.

  1. Look over the materials you have to create the trap with. A box or crate is a great base for your trap.
  2. Think over what simple machines you could use in your trap. (pulley, screw, lever, inclined plane, wedge, or wheel and axle) Simple machines can really help the actions in a trap move easily.
  3. Decide if you want to trap your leprechaun under something or move him off the ground the way we did with our trap.
  4. Figure out what you will use to get a leprechaun’s attention and draw him or her into the trap.

Draw Your Trap on Paper

After visualizing your trap on paper, it is important to draw it. We like to draw planned creations in pencil. The pencil is easy to erase! Sometimes plans change as they are drawn. It is really nice to be able to make changes to a drawing and not feel that you have to start again on another piece of paper.

Make a List of the Supplies You Need

It is important to make a list of all the supplies you need to make your trap. Having everything you need ready to go will insure that you won’t have to revise your plan.  After looking at the supplies you have on hand, you may decide you have to buy a few items on your list. We try to create with what we have on hand. If we don’t have something, we often revise plans and use a different creation supply.

Build Your Trap

Now you are ready to dig and start building.  You have your supplies ready and your plan is done. We started our trip several days before St. Patrick’s Day to make sure we had plenty of time. You may decide to make this a St. Patrick’s Day Eve activity!

Wonderful Leprechaun Traps Created By Others

How to Make a Leprechaun Trap

Playing with Words Leprechaun Trap

Fun-A-Day’s LEGO Leprechaun Trap

Brain Power Boy’s LEGO Leprechaun Trap

Kids Activities Blog Leprechaun Trap

Coffee Cups and Crayons Leprechaun Trap

Here are some other St. Patrick’s Day Activities for Kids

{Printable} Roll and Color St. Patrick’s Day Pages

Creating a Snack with Leprechaun Magic Dust

Creating a Rainbow Place Mat

Rainbow Magazine Collage

{Printable} Gold Coin Counting Mats

how to make a leprechaun trap

If  you create a leprechaun trap, please leave me a comment below telling me about it  or share a picture of it on my Facebook page.

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Crafts for Kids- Rainbow Collage of Colors

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    Crafts for Kids-Rainbow Collage of Colors

We end up with a number of magazines. JDaniel gets two in the mail. I get two in the mail. We get some from my mother in law. Seeing that the magazine pile was getting a little bit tall I decided it was time to do a craft with them. ( We have done a number of crafts with recycled materials.) It would be fun I decided to search for rainbow colors in magazines and then gluing them in arcs of color. It  would one of those crafts for kids that explores a number of skills and upcycle.

The link below is an affiliate link.

I took out a5 Compartment Round Plastic Serving Tray. I didn’t have a tray that held all the colors of the rainbow. We decided we would search the magazines for just the first five colors of the rainbow (red, orange, yellow, green and blue). When we found a swatch of one those colors in a picture that was big enough to cut out, we did just.

We found that the magazines that featured recipe and food tended big pictures that contained the colors we were looking for. JDaniel’s kids magazines tended to have much smaller pictures. Thank goodness we had mine magazines to look through.

Hint: If you don’t have time for your children to cut out the color squares from magazines, you could do it in advance. You could also ask friends or family members to search their magazines and send you the pictures. They may like to help with crafts for kids.

The pictures were cut into small square like shapes. We both tried to cut nice squares with straight edges, but all the edges didn’t end up straight.

Crafts for Kids- Rainbow Collage of Colors

When we thought we had enough of each color, we were ready to start the rainbow collage. The square like sections of each color were glued on the a crayon draw rainbow that displayed the five colors we had searched for.

We found it easier to glue all the squares of one color down at one time and then move on to another color. You could glue them down any way your like. You may find that your children each approach gluing the colors down differently.

Crafts for Kids- Rainbow Collage of Colors

When all the arcs are covered with color squares from magazines, we were done. You may decide to add white construction paper cumulus cloud to either end of the rainbow. A pot of gold could be added too.

Here are some other St. Patrick’s Day activities for kids:

{Printable} Roll and Color St. Patrick’s Day Pages

Creating a Snack with Leprechaun Magic Dust

Creating a Rainbow Place Mat

 

Here are some other crafts for kids that have a St. Patrick’s Day theme:

Simple Sticker Rainbow

Five Little Hand Print Shamrocks Song and Craft

 

If you do try any of the above activities or holiday crafts for kids, please leave me a comment below telling me about it  or share a picture of it on my Facebook page

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Kindergarten Worksheets- Gold Coin Number Mats

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  Kindergarten-Worksheets-Gold-Coin-Math-Mats.

Gold coins are great to use for counting pirate or  leprechaun treasure.  We got a whole bunch of them to use in a pirate vowel drop game this summer. Those same gold coins were used to count and add on using the gold coin number work mats  on this kindergarten worksheets I created. It is great when things can be used in multiple activities.

Young children may use the mats and the coins to count up to the number displayed on each mat. While they could just count the yellow circles on each mat, I thought it would be fun to work with gold coin on the mats. That way children could work on one to one correspondence as they counted on the mat.

Kindergarten-Worksheets-Gold-Coin-Math-Mats.

Hint:

Our coins were on the large side. You want to use smaller Gold Coins for this activity.

Ways to Use These Kindergarten Worksheets

Kindergarten Worksheets- Gold Coin Math Mats

My son is in first grade. He is currently working on addition facts. I had him select a math flashcard from a pile of homemade flashcards. He had to put the first number in his head. Then he had to select the mat that displayed the second number. Finally he counted on that number using coins.

A second addition game we played with these mats had both of us working with a mat. I selected a mat and counted up to the number displayed on it. My son selected a mat and added his number to mine by counting on.

If you have a lot of coins you could line up all the numbered kindergarten worksheets featuring gold coin numbers in number order on the floor. Children could take turns adding coins to the numbers as they counted up to ten.

Hint:

We didn’t laminate or cover out mats with contact paper. If you are using them with multiple children in a classroom or homeschool setting you may want to cover them.Kindergarten Worksheets- Gold Coin Math Mats

If you click on the link below, you can print out your own set of kindergarten worksheets with gold coin numbers.

Gold Coin Counting Mats (PDF)

Here are some other St. Pattys Day activities for kids:

{Printable} Roll and Color St. Patrick’s Day Pages

Creating a Snack with Leprechaun Magic Dust

Creating a Rainbow Place Mat

If you do try any of the above St. Patrick’s Day activities, please leave me a comment below telling me about it  or share a picture of it on my Facebook page

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St Pattys Day Rainbow Folder Game

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 st pattys day rainbow folder game

When I taught second grade, my students always wrote stories about a leprechaun crossing a rainbow from Ireland right to the playground outside our classroom window on St Pattys Day.  I even wrote a version of this story starter for my son. This rainbow crossing file folder game reminds me of those stories. Our little leprechauns (children) can cross the rainbow on gold coins that a leprechaun has left behind on his journey to his pot of gold.

St. Pattys Day Rainbow Folder Game

We had to answer review questions about the concepts my son was studying at school to move forward one coin. (We missed almost a whole week to cold and ice. We needed to get our brains back to thinking about school work.)

St. Pattys Day Rainbow Folder Game

Since there were just the two of us playing, we decided to cross from one color to the next as we move forward. If it had a whole group of children, we would have stayed on the same color all the way up the rainbow.

With most games if you miss a question you lose your turn and have to wait until the other person has had a turn. We played that if a person missed a question the other person had a chance to answer it and move forward one gold coin. My son loves the idea of stealing  or getting an extra turn.

St. Pattys Day Rainbow Folder Game- Reaching the Pot of Gold

The point of the game was to review the concepts he needs to know. I guess we could have just placed the missed question at the bottom of the stack of questions and waited for it to come up again. It might be a good way to see if one of us remembered the answer that had been talked about the last time the question reached the top of the stack.

There really isn’t a right or wrong way to climb across the rainbow to the pot of gold. It is important that you go over the direction or agree to the directions before you start the game.

Supplies for Putting This St Pattys Day Game Together:

The links below are affiliate links.

  • Dot Stickers, Metallic Gold
  • Construction Paper in the Colors of the Rainbow (Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and purple)
  • Black Construction Paper
  • Glue Stick
  • Scissors
  • File Folder
  • Magic Markers

Tips for Putting This File Folder Game Together:

  • The construction paper used to create the rainbow were stacked and then cut into arcs so, they would fit together easily.
  • The rainbow’s arc and the pot for the gold were highlighted on their edges to give them a pop.
  • Gold labels were used instead of cutting out yellow or gold paper add a contrast to the rainbow. Plus they look fun!
  • A ruler was used when sticking the gold labels down in columns. It was placed vertically on the rainbow and the stickers were placed beside the ruler in each color band.

Here are some other St. Pattys Day activities for kids:

{Printable} Roll and Color St. Patrick’s Day Pages

Creating a Snack with Leprechaun Magic Dust

Creating a Rainbow Place Mat

 st pattys day rainbow folder game

If you do try any of the above holiday crafts, please leave me a comment below telling me about it  or share a picture of it on my Facebook page

 

Want more fun rainbow activities? Follow the links:

Classic Cereal Rainbow Craft / Frogs Snails & Puppy Dog Tails

Sparkly Rainbow Slime / Craftulate

Rainbow Candy Smash Cookies / Rainy Day Mum

Rainbow Stacking Cups / SugarAunts

Sticky Rainbow Collage/ Inspired by Family Magazine

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Holiday Crafts for Kids- Rainbow Place Mat

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     Holiday Crafts for Kids- Rainbow

I remember weaving place mats as being one of those holiday crafts for kids that I did often when I was little. In preschool and early elementary school I must have made one for every major holiday. My teachers must have known it was a great fine motor activity! Maybe they just like to have us weave mats!

A rainbow woven place mat seemed like the perfect craft for St. Patrick’s Day! After all leprechauns are said to have hidden their gold at the end of rainbows.

This woven rainbow mat displays the colors of the rainbow in order. I think that that makes this craft one that could be done as part of a weather or spring unit too. Just laminate the place mat or cover it with contact paper and it would be a great at any holiday feast.

We started by following a piece of white construction paper in half. Then slats were cut up from the fold to about about an inch and half away from the top of the paper.  If you are worried about cutting to close too the top you can fold the top section down about an inch half. Then you can cut up to the folded down area. (You can see the folds in our holiday crafts for kids mat at the top and the bottom.) This will be the warp of the weaving.

Holiday Crafts for Kids- Rainbow Place Mat

A stack of the construction paper arranged in the colors of the rainbow was cut into one inch strips. It was important to try to keep all the strips the same width. If that isn’t important to you, you can just have your children cut out long strips out the colors of construction paper found in a rainbow. You could have one or two children be in charge of each color! You could pre-cut all the strips using a paper cutter, if you don’t have time to have your children cut them out. ( That would insure that you have nice straight strips of paper.)

Holiday Crafts for Kids- Rainbow Place Mat

With the strips and place mat paper cut out, it then time to weave. The colored strips will be the weft of weaving. (I think children love to learn new words. I thought warp and weft would be fun for them to know.) The children will alternate weaving the strips over and under that slats cut in the white construction paper.  Little daps of glue or swipes of a glue stick are placed on the ends of each of the strips to hold them in place.

This rainbow mat would be a great center activity or maybe it would be one of those holiday crafts for kids that would be done as whole group.Holiday Crafts for Kids- Rainbow Place Mat

Here are some other holiday crafts for kids that have a St. Patrick’s Day theme:

Simple Sticker Rainbow

Five Little Hand Print Shamrocks Song and Craft

 

Holiday Crafts for Kids- Rainbow (featured)

If you do try any of the above holiday crafts, please leave me a comment below telling me about it  or share a picture of it on my Facebook page

Building Blocks Activity- Creating Shamrocks

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Building Blocks Activity Creating Shamrocks

It is amazing how ways you can use building blocks. My son and have created water parks and tall buildings with them. Recently I challenged him to help me create shamrock silhouettes and then select matching building blocks to place on them. We found that the blocks needed to be rotated to get silhouettes that looked close to shamrocks.

Building Blocks Activity Creating Shamrocks

Creating Building Blocks Shamrocks

Exploring Ways to Make Shamrocks

The link below is an affiliate link.

We started by taking out a bag of small Melissa & Doug 100-Piece Wood Blocks Set.(The blocks found on this link are not the same as ours, but would be great for this activity.) Then I issued the following challenge to both of us (Yes, I issued the directions to myself.):

  • Find as many ways as you can to make shamrocks using the blocks.
  • Each shamrock does not need to be made up of blocks of the same shape or color.
  • The shapes can’t overlap.

Creating the Shamrocks on Construction Paper

After creating four different shamrocks, I traced the building blocks silhouettes on to green paper to be cut out. Several layers of green paper were placed under the outlines so that more than one shape could be built at a time. When the shapes had been cut out they were glued onto a piece of orange paper. ( The Irish flag is green, white and orange.)I thought it would have this part of the activity display two of the flag’s colors.

Building Blocks Activity Creating Shamrocks

Duplicating the Silhouettes with Blocks

For young children just placing the blocks in the correct position would be a challenge. My son is in first grade so I asked him to find the right shapes and then really think about how to display them. He needed to make sure that he selected a chose a different design to display for each block. ( His blocks have unique designs on each side.) This wasn’t possible to do with the red cylinder blocks.

Hint: If your blocks don’t have different designs on each side, you could place different stickers on each of the side. The stickers could have a St. Patrick’s Day theme.

Discussing the Blocks Shape

My son has just finished a unit on 3-D shapes at school. We took a few moments to talk about what 3-D each block was. We also talked about what flat shapes that each shape was made up of.

Many Layers of Learning While Block Building:

  • As we completed all the steps in this block building activity we worked on the following skills:
  • Visual discrimination (Placing the blocks in to shamrock shapes.)
  • Fine Motor Skills (Moving , Tracing, Cutting, and Gluing Shapes)
  • Analyzing what side of a block to use.

Building Blocks Activity Creating Shamrocks

 

 

Here are some more shape activities: 

Dr. Seuss Thing One and Thing Two Shape Activity

Shape Sheep

LEGO Shapes- Open and Closed Polygons

Shapes in a Sandwich 

Sides and Vertices Aliens


If you do try any of the above geometry practice activities, please leave me a comment below telling me about it  or share a picture of it on my Facebook page.

 

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Hexbug Rainbow LEGO Track

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     Hexbug Rainbow LEGO Track

This past Christmas was the year of the LEGO  influx at my house. We have been doing a lot of learning activities with them since Christmas. We have worked on fractions and geometry with LEGOS as well as a number of other activities. Last year was the year of the Hexbug. We have tons of them too. I decide to combine LEGOS and the Hexbugs to create a Hexbug track for my son to race his Hexbugs in. The track and roaming area are supposed to look like a rainbow connected to a cloud. I thought about what would be a fun theme for spring and St. Patrick’s Day.

hexbug rainbow LEGO track- hexbug on the move

Putting the Hexbug Track Together

The link below is an affiliate link.

We use a LEGO® Base 32 x 32  a lot for building and learning. It was large enough to create a four-lane entry track for the Hexbugs and display the outline of a cloud.  I used the first five colors of a rainbow in order to create entry lanes. A variety of sizes of white bricks were used to make the cloud. (If you have a lot of white LEGO Parts and Pieces, they would make your cloud a little more cloud-like. We don’t have any of those.)

The cloud was left empty at first it gave the Hexbugs a lot of open space to roam in.

Hexbug Rainbow LEGO Track

After a few races, some small white bricks were set up as barriers inside the cloud. They posed a challenge for the Hexbugs! One of the great things about Hexbugs is that they are designed to patiently shake their way around barriers.  The barriers were placed in the center of the cloud to make them less frustrating for the Hexbugs and for the boy that would be watching them jostle around the cloud.

It was fun to see if horizontal or vertical barriers would be the most challenging. We tried using both 1×2 and 2×2 bricks to see which would be easiest for the Hexbugs to get around.

Beyond playing with Hexbugs this activity ended up using problem-solving skills. ( I love activities that stretch children’s brains.) What could be done to make the Hexbugs race down the track and around the cloud easier or harder? Each of these concepts was explored as we played.

Here are some other wonderful LEGO activities:

LEGO Fraction Games

Five Days of LEGO Learning Activities

Geometry Riddles Solved with LEGO

LEGO Game- Race to Twenty

Valentine Ideas – Graphing with Candy Hearts and LEGO

Math with LEGO- Activity for Improving Word Problem Skills

How long will your boat float?

Counting Syllables with LEGO Bricks

Over in the Meadow LEGO Creations and Book

LEGO Count and Move ( Free Printable)

Three Billy Goats Gruff Retelling with LEGO

Hexbug Rainbow LEGO Track

If you do try any of the above LEGO learning activities, please leave me a comment below telling me about it or share a picture of it on my Facebook page. If the activity is from another wonderful blog, I bet they would love for you to share how much you like it on their blog or Facebook page.

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Worksheet for Kindergarten-Writing Words on a Rainbow

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 Worksheet for Kindergarten - Writing on a Rainbow


Writing sight words on a rainbow is one of the ways we are working on learning sight words at home. We have been playing a game using the tiles in our kitchen as game board spaces too.  (I will tell you about that one later in the post.) Mastering sight words will help my son become a stronger reader. This simple activity of writing sight words on the  rainbow on this worksheet for kindergarten below with colored ink will help me grow in my son knowledge of words in so many ways.

Worksheet for Kindergarten - Writing on a Rainbow
 

Here are several reasons that I have JDaniel writing sight words:

  • The first is that allows him to have a hands on way to interact with the words. Focusing on trying to write each sight word as many times as he can neatly on its band on the rainbow allow him to work tactile kinetically with the words.
  • I am asking to say the word each time he writes in its band on the rainbow. That helps place each word in his auditory memory as well as his visual memory.
  • Using colored ink to write helps add a fun to a task that might be deemed boring.
  • Clear and legible handwriting is something that we need to work on.
 

Here are the links to download a copies of the Writing Sight Words on a Rainbow Worksheet for Kindergarten:

 
 

Another Sight Word Game

As I mentioned we are trying to find fun ways to work on sight words. Writing sight words on a rainbow is a new activity for us. One we have been doing for a long time is called Reading Tiles. It is super easy and gets JDaniel’s competitive juices flowing. We stand side by side on one of the kitchen tiles. Every word that he read correctly without a hint from me allows him to move forward one kitchen tile. Every word that he needs help on gives me the right to move forward one kitchen tile.  Having me move forward instead of him is just a little frustrating. He ends up saying the words a few times just to make sure that I don’t get to move forward when we get to that word again. We have small kitchen so when he reaches the other end of the kitchen he move back toward me one square at a time.  He just loves getting to see me standing back near the starting tile.

I have shared two simple sight word activities that could easily be done while dinner in cooking in the evening or anytime really. Writing sight words on a rainbow was a great new tool at my house. We will probably be using it again soon. If you would like to print a copy of the rainbow printable we used or one that has a cloud without words so, you can put the words your child needs to work on you can click on the underlined words in the blue sentences above.

Other Sight Word Resources

There are loads of other sight words activities located on my Pinterest board Learning to Read. There are also a number of activities on a group boards I am a part of called Reading and Writing Readiness and Learn to Read.


Deirdre Smith writes/owns JDaniel4’s Mom. After twenty years as a elementary school and technology resource teacher in Northern Virginia, she became a stay at home mom in upstate South Carolina. Her blog features ways she and her 6 year old are exploring learning, crafting, creating healthy meals and living life to its fullest. Deirdre can also be found  on her blog’s FB page. You can also check her out on Google+.

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