St. Patrick's Day Archives - Page 2 of 2

St. Patrick’s Day Activities: Leprechauns Never Lie Learning Fun

February 22, 2013 By Deirdre

Last week I shared the book Patrick’s Day with you along with several St. Patrick’s Day themed activities in a post called St. Patrick’s Day Activities- Part One. Today I wanted to share with you another wonderful St. Patrick’s Day themed book called Leprechauns Never Lie by Lorna and Lecia Balian.Wait you may be thinking! Haven’t you shared this book with us before. I have shared Leprechauns Never Lie before here and on the Book Chook two years ago. I thought it was worth another share with look here and I am also sharing it on the Kid’s Activities Blog. It is a really wonderful book. I just keeping wanting to share it.

Ninny Nanny lives with her Grandmother. Gran isn’t able to do much around the house and Ninny Nanny is lazy. She doesn’t like to fill the rain barrel with water, dig the potatoes, fix the wholes in the roof, or gather sticks for the fire.

Her solution to the growing list of chores is to find a leprechaun’s gold and have the chore issues go away. She accidentally trips over one while searching and catches him. He is supposed to give her his gold. He ends up getting her to do her chores and almost has to give his gold to her. Ninny Nanny ends up not believing the location he tells at the end of his ranting about its final location.

Leprechauns Never Lie is so much fun. JDaniel loved watching Ninny Nanny get tricked and I love the humor in the stories illustrations.

What did we do to explore the book Leprechauns Never Lie?

I put out a number of sensory activities for JDaniel that recreated the chores Ninny Nanny had to do in Leprechauns Never Lie.

Water Pouring

Ninny Nanny has to pour water from a bucket into a rain barrel. JDaniel got to pour water into all kinds of containers. Creating a Thatched Roof

I put out some gingerbread scented play dough, yellow straw segments, and a chopstick for this activity.

JDaniel and I both worked on drawing the house. It was a little harder than I thought it would be to draw the house in play dough.

When the pictures was done, he added the yellow straws to roof to create a thatched roof like effect.

Digging Up Potatoes

Last year I had JDaniel use the spoon and rake shown above to dig through beans to find shamrocks. This year I pulled out the same materials and added some new ones. I added a lot more beans and some rocks.

He had a great time placing the rock potatoes and shamrocks in the beans and digging them out. After he had dug out all of the shamrocks, he planted them in the beans in rows. He was so proud of getting them to balance and look like they were really growing up out of the beans.

Twig Transfer Activity

We have had a lot of branches fall from our beech trees this winter. JDaniel loves to gather them up and pile them near the bushes along the back of the house. We call it his “beaver dam”. I grabbed some his branches and broke them into tiny twigs.

JDanie was asked to move them from one bowl to the next. It was hard to hold the chopsticks tight enough to move the sticks, but he was able to do it.

How have you explored children’s books this week?

Disclaimer: Links in the post to Amazon are affiliate links.

Science for Kids- Experiments with Green

February 19, 2013 By Deirdre

I was contacted to try some science for kids experiments by TndrBox late last year. JDaniel loves to do science experiment especially ones that have chemical reactions so, I agreed to look over one of their monthly kits. We got the kit quickly and would have done five of the science experiments that came with it if JDaniel had gotten his way.

We did do all of them in just two days. I would read him what science concepts would be learning from the booklet I got from TndrBox along with the directions and he was able to do most of the experiments on his own. Many of the experiments we conducted were at night and the pictures I took didn’t come out well. We redid some of them so I could take pictures. Most came out with the same result and some came out better. I am glad we repeated these science for kids experiments.

Here are our science for kids experiments:

Growing Crystals

The first experiment that we did involved growing crystals with Borax. I must have misread the directions because we didn’t end up with a lot of crystals. I decided we need to retry the experiment last week after I watch the video on the TndrBox site and it came out perfectly. The crystal appeared less than 24 hours after we mixed the Borax with water.

Chalk Painting

TndrBox called this experiment DIY Paint. It was such fun for JDaniel to make. He got to smash a piece of chalk and then follow the rest of the directions to create paint with it. Smashing the chalk was so exciting for him. I don’t often let him hold a hammer. We talked about how we were working with binding the chalk to the water to create paint, but I think JDaniel was more focused on the paint creation.Magnet and Paperclip Painting

The directions said to place blobs of paint on a paper plate along with a paperclip. Beneath the plate you were to move a magnet. As you moved the magnet, the paper clip would move through the paint and create a design. If you moved the paperclip long enough the blobs of paint would smear together.

JDaniel took a couple of minutes to get the hang of it, but once he got the paperclip moving he had a great time.

We also performed experiments that involved creating slime, and make a balloon centrifuge. I love getting to do these experiments with JDaniel and having almost everything we needed come in a kit made it so much easier for me.

Disclaimer: I was sent a monthly science for kids kit for review. My thoughts and opinions about it are my own. When original experiments were done the pictures were too dark to share here. We redid them using green as the theme one morning when the light was better.

Family Fun- Over the Veggie Rainbow

February 18, 2013 By Deirdre

If you happen to look through the March issue of Family Fun magazine, you will see that their Treat of the Month looks a lot like this snack that I created for a guest post on the Kid’s Activities Blog. It doesn’t look just like this snack. The food stylist made a few changes to it, but it is really based on mine. The addition of carrot coins was genius. I really like that idea. They went with guacamole rather than spinach hummus. Their snack has beautifully arrange peppers that are uniform in height too.

How do I know? Well, they contacted me and asked it they could use my idea. I was over the rainbow or maybe over the moon. If you look very carefully along the inside edge of the page, you will see my name and the name of this blog. You might need a magnifying glass, but it is there. My husband said it was very had to see. To me it looks small, but very clear. Maybe that is because it is my name that I am reading.

I have never had my name in a magazine before and I am just a little thrilled. (Can you tell?) Even JDaniel got excited about it. He helped make the hummus in the original snack so, I think he feels like he had a big part in its success. I loving cooking and baking with him. It is wonderful that the snack they like best was one that he worked on too.

I receive my copies of the Family Fun magazine via Federal Express on Valentine’s Day. It was so cool. I am not sure when the issue will get to your mailbox if you get this wonderful magazine. When it does, I hope you will turn to page 26 of your Family Fun magazine and check out the Over the Veggie Rainbow.

St. Patrick’s Day Activities: Paper Plate Emotions Activity

February 15, 2013 By Deirdre

I have some many St. Patrick’s Day books I want to explore with you. I will be sharing one book this week, one next week and one on March 9th . Why spread them out? Well, I have post exploring a Dr. Seuss book coming up for Dr. Seuss’ birthday and one about a book with a special birthday. (JDaniel will turn five in early March.) This week I want to share the book St. Patrick’s Day in the Morning and some activities we did to explore it.

St. Patrick's Day Activities: Paper Plate Emotions Activity

Patrick totally thinks the St. Patrick’s Day parade is to celebrate him in this wonderful book by Elizabeth Lee O’Donnell. He has been to Patrick’s Day parade. People carry banners with his name and he just knows it is all for him. Knowing he is special fills him with joy. Patrick tries to treat everyone well and be the best boy he can be.

When his mom that he has been wrong about this and who the parade is really for, Patrick is filled with disappointment and anger. He doesn’t like being ordinary. He takes out his anger on the people he run into and they become worried about what has changed his behavior.

In the end he learns that people truly think he is special just because he is who is and he apologizes to those he has hurt.This book opened the door for a wonderful discussion with JDaniel about how we treat people and how we each of things that make us special.

What else did we do to explore this Patrick’s Day?

St. Patrick’s Paper Plate Emotions Spinner

Patrick goes through a wide variety of feeling during the course of his story. I made JDaniel a paper plate emotions spinner. We used it to talk about the feelings Patrick felt as well as what make him feel sad, happy, or excited.

This was a lot of fun to use. I think we will use it when talking about characters in other stories too. Counting Objects in Books We are working on number recognition at our house. I made some four leaf clover and placed numbers on them. JDaniel had to tell the number on each one and then find pictures that contained that number of something.

JDaniel found a picture with three dogs in it. We continued through the book and found several more pictures that had three of the same objects in it.

This was a fun way to walk through the book again and work on numbers.

Hair Gel Bag for Letter Writing

I was told that I need to work with JDaniel on how he forms the letters of his name. The boy in the book thought the name on the banner in the parade was his. JDaniel got to work on his letters with a gel bag.I have seen hair gel letter practice bags all over Pinterest. They are so easy to make. Literally it is hair gel mixed with food coloring in a ziplock bag. Our bag had layers of packing tapes on the seal to make sure that it stayed close.

JDaniel had the best time trying to make his letters. The gel moves freely and did make it hard to see some of the completed letters. It did give him practice in how to form the letters though.

How did you explore concepts found in children’s books this week?

Disclaimer: Links in the post to Amazon are affiliate links.

Read.Explore.Learn.- Leprechauns Never Lie

March 16, 2012 By Deirdre

Welcome to Read.Explore.Learn.! This meme was designed to be a place for you to share the learning opportunities, crafts, field trips, and other activities you have done this week that tie into children’s books.

I look forward to seeing the ways you have learned with and explored books.

Steps:

- Link your activity below.

- Please place the Read.Explore.Learn. the badge on your post or create a link back to this meme.

- Please try to visit at least three of the other people that have placed links below and leave a comment. I will visit each of you and leave a kind comment.

- If you are not linking up an activity and are just visiting, please try to stop by a few of the links below.

My Book Tie-Ins of the Week:

The leprechaun in Leprechauns Never Lie by Lorna Balian is a very tricky guy. Ninny Nanny and her Gram are in dire straits prior to catching the leprechaun. Once he has been accidentally captured when Ninny Nanny falls over a log and onto him, the leprechaun appears to forget where he has hidden his gold.

The leprechaun first tells them that he thinks it is in the straw that was to have been put on the roof of the thatched house to repair the holes that exist there. Ninny Nanny tries spreading it on the ground and finds moving it to the roof is the best solution.

Then he says it is in a pile of branches under a tree that should have been taken in as firewood. Gran sorts through branches to look for coins and Ninny Nanny carries them into the fireplace.

Next, he says it is in the river. Ninny Nanny has to drag buckets of the water to a water barrel outside their house that is empty when dropping it on the ground fails to keep the water from flowing back into the river.

Finally, he remembers it was moved to the potato patch that is filled with potatoes that Ninny Nanny had been too lazy to dig up. After digging up all but one plant, Ninny Nanny is furious that the treasure can’t be found.

She is so upset that she releases the leprechaun in a fit of anger. He runs as fast as he can away.

That night Ninny Nanny and Gran have potato soup by a warm fire made of wood Ninny Nanny brought in. Later in the night, the leprechaun returns after they have gone to sleep to retrieve his gold from under the last plant.

I love that Ninny Nanny and Gran along with the leprechaun both end up with treasure. This is such a fun book to read. The brown and white pictures are filled with humor and whimsy.

What did we do?

We upcycled the wipes container and made it a treasure chest. Inside the treasure chest was pinto beans and shamrocks. JDaniel had to dig for the shamrocks using a little rake. After a few minutes of raking, he decided to use measuring spoons instead.

Once he had found all of the shamrocks, he decided to just transfer the beans back and forth between the treasure check and the container I use to hold the pinto beans.

Wipe Container Becomes a Storage Container

When we finished playing with the beans and shamrocks, we put plastic bags into the wipe container. We put the container in my car so, we will have plastic bags and a hand to store treasures ( acorns and small rocks we find during outings, dirty clothes, and more.

Shamrock Cookies

JDaniel loves to eat cookies and make them. We made shamrock cookies to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day and to share with friends.