Our St. Patrick's Day Celebration...

We had a wonderful time celebrating St. Patrick's Day here at Blue Sky Daycare! We began our day with our calendar and weather routine. It was so exciting to see the "Today" tag on our calendar resting on top of the St. Patrick's Day marker! Yay! We enjoyed our normal March circle time, noted that everyone was wearing green of one sort of another, and sang our "March Wind" song, and then our read St. Patrick's Day celebration began!

We started by observing the ingredients for making Irish Soda Bread. We named flour, sugar, buttermilk, eggs, baking powder, baking soda, salt, vegetable oil, and raisins. Each child had the opportunity to add one ingredient to the mix and stir it.

It was hard to decide if stirring or dumping was more fun, but everyone got lots of encouragement no matter what they did.

The littles were happy to add raisins, but only after they had done some quality control and sampled one or two. When you're cooking, it's important that only the best ingredients are used, right?

While the bread was baking, we made beautiful rainbow pasta necklaces.

The children really worked their fine motor skills because the holes in the pasta were fairly small. Once our fingers were all done their job, the children had the chance to work the rest of their bodies as they raced around the back yard looking for leprechaun "gold." It was thrilling for the children to find that the leprechauns' pot had been too full and some of the gold had been left behind for us to discover!

The leprechauns were very tricky and the children had to use their powers of observation very well...

... and sometimes they found more than one piece of gold at a time.

It was much more chilly that we thought it would be, so our time outside was cut somewhat short. We came back in and enjoyed a green-themed lunch of our lovely Irish Soda Bread, cucumbers, green grapes, green apple, and cottage cheese. It was tasty, and we made enough to send home a bit for everyone to share with their family.

What St. Patrick's Day would be complete without a reading of That's What Leprechauns Do be Eve Bunting? We thought that the leprechauns that visited must have been much more mischevious and wild than the leprechauns in the story since they dropped all that gold and didn't pick it up!

See you tomorrow!

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