Last year, we celebrated St. Patrick's Day with a Toddler Play Date with a bunch of our favorite friends. While we may have missed the opportunity to post last year, it's so nice to catch up and share all of our activity ideas with you this year as the season of green has again rolled around.
We always try to keep things short and sweet, so we had some free play time, music, craft and snack. I had a story ready and waiting - but the kids seemed a little too busy this time! Our kids were all around 12-18 month toddlers for this play date but I think they'd even still enjoy most of the activities.
We started with a sensory bin filled with lots of green things - blocks, shapes from our shape sorter, balls, glitter shamrocks and gold coins from the craft store. We also included shamrock shaped Mardi Gras beads which the kids loved finding. To make our sensory bin nice and green, we filled it with green split peas which were absolutely perfect!
While we played, we put on some good uptempo Irish music to keep things lively. If you don't have any already, iheartradio offers a free Shamrock Radio station that would work very well!
We worked on our St. Patrick's Day craft, which was really simple to bring together. We started with a piece of blue paper and cut a wide U shape from the center. Folding the paper lightly in half makes this very easy. We cut a matching sized piece of contact paper, peeled the backing, and applied it to the paper - leaving the adhesive "sticky" through the rainbow shaped window.
We had cups of tissue paper squares in all of the colors. Some kids needed some assistance, but for the most part, everyone had a good handle on this simple St. Patty's Day project.
Even a year later, our finished product still hangs on the white board in our kitchen. This would also look great in front of a window giving a sun-catcher effect!
We finished our play date off with the traditional snack of leprechauns - Lucky Charms. We're not one for formalities. We pretty much pour it on the table and let them graze for the marshmallows.
And while our kids were pretty played out, we had a great little story picked out to finish out the event. Perfect for toddlers just learning their numbers, this festive book will have them counting along!
What other ideas for St. Patrick's Day play dates have you used in the past? We'd love to hear from you!
