Spring has arrived! Which means St. Patrick’s Day crafts for children will be something to start thinking about. Here are 5 easy craft ideas that promote their fine motor skills while also having fun!
1. Beaded Shamrocks — In honor of St. Patrick’s Day, shamrocks are one of simplest crafts to make to symbolize this holiday. This is a great way to work on their motor learning skills and bilateral hand skills (the ability to use both hands together). Navigating and twisting the pipe cleaners and beads, certainly strengthens fine motor skills. This activity also helps coordinate small muscles in hands and develop fine motor control. Here’s how:
-First you will use a green pipe cleaner to shape and curve 3 leaves to form the shamrock.
-Grab some beads and put them through the pipe cleaner in the certain spots where you would like them.
-With a second pipe cleaner you will twist the ends together and form the stem to connect all at the bottom.
- Once all is done, you now have a beautiful beaded shamrock for St. Patrick's Day!
2. Button Rainbow Activity — Rainbows are a fun way to help your children work on the development of color recognition, along with their fine motor skills. This rainbow activity teaches color discrimination, sorting and naming the different colors. Here’s how:
-You can decide to print out a rainbow or have your children color their own on a white sheet of paper.
-Once you have your rainbow, you will place your colorful buttons on the correct strip of color on the rainbow.
-If every color button on the rainbow is correct, then you can start gluing them down to create a colorful button rainbow.
-If you would like to add, you can even draw a little pot of gold at the end of the rainbow!
3. Rainbow Q Tip Painting — This is another fun rainbow activity to engage your child's motor development and pincer grip. This works on their color coordination and placement, and also their hand strength and grip by having them color with a small q tip. Here’s how:
-Draw or print out a rainbow for your children to color in.
-Once you have a rainbow, set up a plate of paint of each color of the rainbow on it. -Have your kids paint in the lines in the correct color sequence with the q tips to complete your rainbow.
4. St. Patrick’s Day Playdough Treasure Hunt — Kids will love playing with the playdough and finding the hidden coins for this activity. They can use this to practice counting and strengthen their fine motor skills in many ways. All of the rolling, squeezing, stretching, and pinching is great for their hands and finger muscles. Here’s how:
-You will need coins or beads and green colored playdough or slime.
-Spread out the playdough and then stick the coins or beads in different spots of the playdough then roll it up into a ball.
-Have your kids find and count every one they find in the playdough for their treasure hunt.
5. St. Patrick’s Day Straw Art Activity — For this activity you will either draw out or print a shamrock for your kids to stamp with the straw. Using the straw to paint is a great way to allow your kids to work on eye hand coordination to move and stamp the straw all over and in the lines of the shamrock.
- Have a piece of paper with a shamrock on it. You can find many free printable coloring pages online.
-Pour some green paint into a small cup.
-Get a straw to dip and make small circles to cover as much as they can in the shamrock.
-Once they are done stamping the circle, let dry, then cut it out and glue it on a green piece of paper for the finished product.
Hope you have some St. Patrick’s Day fun with all of these activities!