Shamrocks

On Monday, we began our week-long celebration of St. Patrick's Day with a lesson on shamrocks.  This is such a festive holiday - you just can't help but get excited and maybe even dance a jig!  (Not that I danced a jig or anything...just sayin'.)

 

In Circle, we introduced the letter Vv, and continued counting our bananas by ones and tens.  Each day, we also practice singing the Days of the Week song, as well as saying the whole date.  (Ex: Today is Tuesday, March 12, 2013.)  We talked about the difference between shamrocks (3 leaves) and lucky four-leaf clovers.  We read the book:

 

At the math table, the children matched shamrock patterns.  I found this over at Preschool Printables a loooooooong time ago.  Check them out for lots of free file folder games and other printables to work on at home. 

 

You may have noticed that we do a lot of matching activities in preschool.  This is for good reason - the children are learning how to recognize things that are the same and different, which will help them with letters and numbers as well.

In art, we printed shamrocks using green paint and shamrock cookie cutters.  This was an easy peasy craft, but one that the kiddos really loved!  Some were content printing just a few shamrocks, while others decided to fill the entire sheet of paper!

Here's where those mad matching skills come in handy:

The kids matched the letters in shorter words like "green" and "windy", then said each letter name.  After that, we moved on to a more challenging set with the words "shamrock" and "rainbow".  Again, they matched the letters and said each letter name.  They did a fantastic job with this!!  (Word labels by RFTS Preschool.)

 

At the end of class, we had a {very condensed} lesson about taking care of our teeth, and we read:



 

We also:

• colored a picture with Piglet and a four-leaf clover (fine motor skills).
• made leprechaun faces using a playdough mat and green playdough.
• played in the block room.