The winter makes me feel a strong need to up my parenting game. The beautiful weather of the spring, summer and fall gives us hours and hours of outside fun and play and happy kids. The cold weather (and all the sickness we've had) has led to a LOT of time inside and honestly more screen time for the kiddos than I'd like (although they certainly aren't complaining). My solution to this has been to try to involve the kids in extra activities like art projects and simple science experiments. This past week I decided to do St. Patrick's Day themed thing each day we can- and what fun we've had! I've never "celebrated" this holiday so much in my life, but I guess that's life with two little ones at home.
We checked a book out of the library about a leprechaun who is sad that he lost his pot of gold. We talked about how leprechaun's hunt for gold at the end of the rainbow and then we made rainbows out of torn paper. We talked about the order of the colors in every rainbow and talked a little about the process by which we see rainbows. Both boys loved this activity! Chase was very serious about creating an accurate rainbow and Hudson really enjoyed a more abstract approach and sole control over a glue stick.
The next day we made mint chocolate chip cookies- dyed green of course. The boys obviously loved this. I've just recently gotten brave enough to cook with both kids at the same time, and let me tell you, it's no piece of cake! I have to remind myself that we are having fun and learning, but it is chaotic and messy! Not to mention that they are both major cookie dough stealers- with the two year old being more persistent and undeterred than I've ever seen a child before!
One day we made four leaf clovers out of pipe cleaners. My boys LOVE pipe cleaners and I had green ones left over from a Christmas activity. Hudson just played around with his, but Chase was able to follow my instructions and put his together with very little help from me. Then we "searched" for these lucky clovers- we've taken turns hiding them for the others to find.
On actual St Patrick's Day I made the boys a green breakfast- a green smoothie and green muffins. As you can see from the picture, one kid was more excited about them than the other.
I made a green lunch as well, green pasta, a green apple and lime yogurt to dip. I can't say that the green pasta was impressive in any way to my kids.
I think you can say St. Patrick's Day was well celebrated in our family this year! Now on to Easter!
We checked a book out of the library about a leprechaun who is sad that he lost his pot of gold. We talked about how leprechaun's hunt for gold at the end of the rainbow and then we made rainbows out of torn paper. We talked about the order of the colors in every rainbow and talked a little about the process by which we see rainbows. Both boys loved this activity! Chase was very serious about creating an accurate rainbow and Hudson really enjoyed a more abstract approach and sole control over a glue stick.
The next day we made mint chocolate chip cookies- dyed green of course. The boys obviously loved this. I've just recently gotten brave enough to cook with both kids at the same time, and let me tell you, it's no piece of cake! I have to remind myself that we are having fun and learning, but it is chaotic and messy! Not to mention that they are both major cookie dough stealers- with the two year old being more persistent and undeterred than I've ever seen a child before!
One day we made four leaf clovers out of pipe cleaners. My boys LOVE pipe cleaners and I had green ones left over from a Christmas activity. Hudson just played around with his, but Chase was able to follow my instructions and put his together with very little help from me. Then we "searched" for these lucky clovers- we've taken turns hiding them for the others to find.
We did a little hunt for leprechaun gold. Nora joined us, and I love these pictures of Hudson explaining the whole deal to her.
Love it all! I'll just start sending my kids to you for all of their holiday merriment needs. Seriously, the Easter we spent at the Smith house is still my favorite one ever!!
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