Storytime - St. Patrick's Day

This storytime Saturday actually fell on March 17th, St. Patrick's Day! There's lots of fun things to do with the holiday and I tried to take advantage of them. My maternal grandmother was very into her Irish heritage and she'd always call on St. Patrick's Day to make sure we were wearing green. I like to think she would have appreciated this particular storytime.

This storytime was a half hour later than I usually start (11:30), so I brought snacks, assuming the kids would be hungry. Playing on the theme, I made a green fruit salad - kiwi, green grapes and honeydew melon. This was a big hit, although I incorrectly assumed the kids would eat the fruit with their fingers. Nope! They all insisted on forks, so we had a little delay finding forks for the fruit salad.

The first book I read was The Luckiest St. Patrick's Day Ever by Teddy Slater. It was a very cute book about leprechauns and how they celebrate St. Patrick's Day.

 

Then I read St. Patrick's Day in the Morning by Eve Bunting and Jan Brett. I really liked this one...it was the perfect length and had an easy to understand plot. The little boy in the story defies expectations by secretly accomplishing what his family had deemed him "too little" to do. All kids relate to that plot! And there was a dog pal in the story - that always goes over well.

 

I wanted to save plenty of time for this week's craft, since it was a little more involved that usual (and required more parental assistance). We made popsicle stick picture frames. I had colored popsicle sticks and shamrock stickers and green glitter glue to decorate the frames. While we waited for the frames to dry and the glue to set (this took longer than I expected), I took pictures of the kids in a leprechaun disguise. I later emailed the pictures to their parents to print out and put in the frame. The kids really enjoyed getting their picture taken. I really think the snack at the beginning helped keep them focused.

After storytime, I invited everyone to join us at a local park for some playtime. It was a gorgeous spring day and we were definitely tired when we got home!