Tag Archives: St. Patrick’s Day

Design a Leprechaun Trap: Picture Book STEAM Challenge

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My daughter still talks about the time the “leprechauns” came to her preschool classroom and left their footprints everywhere, and that was years ago! There’s no doubt it’s fun to imagine leprechauns at this time of year, so it was tons of fun to read How to Trap a Leprechaun to learn that we can get our wish is we catch one of the lucky little guys! Designing a leprechaun trap is a seasonal STEAM project that requires a bit of creativity. After all, if the Leprechauns we’re catching don’t really exist what rules are there?
The leprechaun traps STEM challenge is seasonal way to practice building things and learning from design mistakes. Inspired by the book How to Trap a Leprechaun.
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Activity Ideas for a Toddler Rainbow Busy Box

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Today we were all about rainbows! My toddler “Rainbow” busy box includes a cut-and-paste craft, color sorts, rainbow books, and other fun items related to rainbows!
My main activity for my toddler was a simple cut-and-paste rainbow color sort craft using paint chip squares and images in all colors of the rainbow. This is such a simple activity, but my daughter loved that she had “made a rainbow” all by herself.

Cut-and-Paste Paint Chip Rainbow


To begin with, I had a pile of paint chip squares, so I used those to make an accordion book, held together simply with tape.
Then, I found some clipart of items of a variety of colors. You can have a search through a shop catalog or magazine for items of a variety of colors. 
My girl enjoyed cutting out the items and gluing them on the correct page. This was a perfect small motor skills practice activity. There was no pressure to cut “on the line.”
Picking up the paper and sorting it on to the correct square was also a perfect challenge for a young preschooler or older toddler. It takes good finger control in order to pinch paper. Glue is always fun.
The whole activity was just a great chance to try an activity by herself, from cutting to glue. And then she had a beautiful rainbow “accordion” book at the end of it!

Color Puff Ball Sort

Colored puff balls are such a fun soft manipulative for the little ones to play with. I love that, even if they are thrown, there is no harm done. Because they are so light, they don’t go far either.

For this activity, I cut down some toilet paper tubes to three different heights: from 1 into to full sized. then I wrapped each tube in construction paper and labeled them with number stickers. 
You could also use thicker colorful paper and do away with the toilet paper tubes all together!
Then, I include the correct number of puff balls in the busy box to allow for one to fit in the smallest, two in the next, 3 in the next, etc. the goal is for the correct number of puff balls to correlate to the color of the tube. 
The first time we played with this, my toddler did not understand. The next time it came out, she figured it out and enjoyed it!

More Ideas for a Rainbow-Themed Busy Box

Here are the other activities that fit in her rainbow busy box. The items below link to Amazon, for which I am an affiliate.

See more rainbow and color products in my store!
[tcb_woo_shop limit=’8′ columns=’4′ orderby=’date’ order=’desc’ paginate=’1′ cache=’false’ hide-result-count=’1′ hide-catalog-ordering=’1′ hide-sale-flash=’0′ hide-title=’0′ hide-price=’0′ hide-rating=’0′ hide-cart=’0′ hide-pagination=’0′ ids=’44872,45037,45055′ category=” cat_operator=’in’ taxonomy=” terms=” terms_operator=’in’ tag=” tag_operator=’in’ align-items=’center’ ct=’shop-0′ ct-name=’Original Shop’]
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Counting with Gold Coins

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For a time, my preschooler struggled with counting to 10. Those upper numbers just could not seem to go in order! She also did not yet recognize the numerals and could not quite comprehend 1-to-1 correspondence. But, she loves hands-on fun, so I decided to make her activity mats for counting with gold coins to practice number concepts.

With our gold coins and activity mats, we practice understanding basic number concepts: counting in order, one-on-one correspondence, and number and numeral recognition.

Counting Gold at the End of the Rainbow

On our activity mats, the gold coins are in a pot at the end of the rainbow. Two little leprechaun friends are on the other side of the rainbow. My daughter loves rainbows, and she loves the shiny coins we found!

We practiced taking a number card (I made them from 1 to 10) and putting that number of coins in the pot of gold.

My daughter found this quite difficult with the higher numbers, but she could easily do it for the lower ones! I also made mat with the coins already in the pot and the numbers already printed in the square. This helped my girl with one-on-one correspondence.

St. Patricks’ Day Gold Ten Frames

I also made ten frames. Some of them have just 1, 2, 3, etc. squares with coins. Others have all ten frames filled with a coin and the numeral written on top of it. With those, my daughter lined the coins up on the frame and counted up to 10 as she did so.

We even tried a simple dice game together, where we roll a number and add that number of coins to the ten frame. When she got to 10, she won. This is basic addition practice as well, although for her it was just a gold coin game!

After I took these pictures, I laminated the blank mat. Now I’m going to put real money on the pot and have my older child count it up and write the numbers with dry erase markers! This makes it a nice little addition to her math practice as well!

We had fun with these activities. What would you do with a pot of gold like this? I have a feeling Strawberry may be putting the gold coins in to her purse for a shopping game next!

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Free Count to Ten Pot of Gold Sampler

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You can also get additional Counting Gold pages for a small fee. Click the images below to find out more and to see more amazing rainbow-themed products. 

[tcb_woo_shop limit=’8′ columns=’4′ orderby=’date’ order=’desc’ paginate=’1′ cache=’false’ hide-result-count=’1′ hide-catalog-ordering=’1′ hide-sale-flash=’0′ hide-title=’0′ hide-price=’0′ hide-rating=’1′ hide-cart=’0′ hide-pagination=’1′ ids=’44886,45037,45055,44872′ category=” cat_operator=’in’ taxonomy=” terms=” terms_operator=’in’ tag=” tag_operator=’in’ align-items=’center’ ct=’shop-0′ ct-name=’Original Shop’]

Want more ideas on using play money of different kinds in your classroom or homeschool? See the posts below!

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