St. Patrick’s Day Craft for Kids- Fine Motor Fridays
This week for Fine Motor Fridays I've got a fun St. Patrick's Day Craft for Kids that has bonus Fine Motor Fun added in!
We haven't done much for St. Patrick's Day at our house in the past. We usually get together with friends at a family-friendly Irish Pub in Chicago. It's pretty fun to see the kids doing their best step dancing and I can't wait to see Miss Three Year Old dancing it up this year!
Last year to get in the mood we did some green sensory activities. This year we're going fine motor, baby!
This craft had two super easy components to it. They could be done ahead of time by yourself, or together with your child. Both components could also be adapted to materials you have on hand. You could make your own leprechaun puppet and if you have gold coins or gold paper you could use them instead of orange paper coins. This was what I had on hand!
Here is how I did it in case you would like to do it the same way!
St. Patrick's Day Craft for Kids- Fine Motor Leprechaun Puppet
Materials:
Leprechaun Printable Puppet (printed on cardstock)
Crayons or markers
Glue Stick
Scissors
Paper Bag
Orange Yarn (optional)
(Note: We used this cute free printable Leprechaun Hand Puppet from FreePaperBagPuppets.com. After seeing how much my daughter enjoyed making this puppet and playing with it, I think we will have to try out more of their puppets! So cute! And lots of fine motor skills practice went into making it- coloring, cutting, gluing and of course controlling the puppet!)
Directions are simple! Print the puppet on card stock to make it more durable for use with the clothespins. Color him, cut him out and use a glue stick to assemble him according to the picture on the website. Miss Three loves cutting yarn so we snipped up some strands of orange yarn and used a glue stick to add a fuzzy (adolescent-looking) beard, this is totally optional but I never miss out on an opportunity for cutting practice! Next just use a crayon, marker or felt tipped pen to add numbers down his sleeves.
St. Patrick's Day Craft for Kids- Counting Coins Clothespins
Materials:
Ten Clothespins (ours were provided for free by CraftProjectIdeas.com)
Orange construction paper
Glue stick
Small circle paper punch
Directions are simple. Punch 55 small orange circles. Glue them on the clothespins in ascending numbers from 1-10. Allow the glue to dry. Done! Here is what ours look like….we tried yellow circles first but orange looked more like gold coins. Also…the 4 coin clothespin was in use at this time! 🙂
Both the kids enjoyed this St. Patrick's Day Craft, which made me so happy!
Mr. One Year Old is really into anything even vaguely mechanical so I knew he'd love the clothes pins. I didn't try to encourage any specific activity for him, the clothespins were more than enough to keep him interested. I did supervise him closely with these clothespins as they pinch stronger than the plastic dollar store clothespins he often plays with.
Miss Three is in that pretend play phase and I knew she would get a kick out of acting out scenes with the Leprechaun. I did my best Irish accent, which is surely the worst Irish accent in the world, but it made her giggle so I went with it! I told her how Leprechauns love their gold and we needed to give him back all of his gold coins- BUT- We HAVE to put the right number of coins on each number on his arms! I was surprised that she did better with the clothespins with her left hand than her right!
You could modify this St. Patrick's Day Craft to work on colors as well, using a rainbow, or letters- anything you want! I just liked the idea of counting his gold coins.
I hope you enjoyed this craft! If you are looking for more St. Patrick's Day Kids Activities & Inspiration, come follow my St. Patrick's Day Pinterest board!
Fine Motor Fridays
Here we are again with a group of terrific bloggers, each bringing you a playful fine motor skills activity. Please click through to each one to see what fun ideas they are sharing this week!
Feeding the Monster from Powerful Mothering
Magic Leprechaun Spray Fine Motor Play from Little Bins for Little Hands
Pipe Cleaner Rainbow from Still Playing School
Using A Knife from P is for Preschooler
Excavating Playdough Dinosaur Eggs from School Time Snippets
Personalized Hot Air Balloon Contact Paper Craft  from House of Burke
Thanks for reading my post today! If you enjoy trying simple, playful activities with your baby or toddler, I invite you to check out a lovely collaborative eBook that I contributed to. Zero to Two ~ the book of play is chock full of easy activities, step-by-step tutorials and inspiring photographs from some of the top kids bloggers from around the world! There is an index that helps you select the perfect activity based on your child's stage in life and many of the activities are perfect for multiple siblings of different ages to do together! Learn more here!
I love how the layout of the numbers on his arms encouraged your daughter to use both left and right hand for the clothespins!
Fun idea! Lots of fine motor skills built into this St. Patty’s Day activity.
p.s. Love the stickers on your daughter’s hand, too. My daughter is the same way; apparently paper is over-rated! hehe.
What a fun way to work on numbers and fine motor skills!
Great idea for learning numbers.
I’ve featured it on The Sunday Showcase tis week: http://www.herecomethegirlsblog.com/2014/03/01/st-patricks-day-activities-preschoolers.html