St. Patrick's Day Crafting

Since little man is starting to become more familiar with tools and really enjoyed his Valentine's craft, I wanted to try and continue his crafting time but also keep it simple because he is only two. For St. Patrick's Day I thought I would do something easy that would work on his fine motor skills. I haven't let him play with crayons yet because he is still going to his mouth with almost everything, but we have to start sometime. For this craft I used poster board to create shamrocks for him to decorate with crayons. I just printed out a simple shamrock print to use as a tracer which you can find anywhere by googling. After cutting out the shamrocks, I used tape on the back to hold them down on the tray for him so he didn't have to worry about them flying around and he could focus on the coloring part. I gave him a variety of green and yellow crayons to work with so he had limited choices and didn't become overwhelmed. Then I just let him go with it while I colored one to model. He stopped to move around several times and then would come right back to keep working.

 A few side notes...try to use the more matte side of the poster board as it will take the crayon better without kind of smearing. I prefer a more high quality crayon like Crayola just because they color smoother without him having to push so hard so he can work on his pincher grip without needing to grind it into the table. If you want to be able to keep the art work forever, I would put the name and date on the back and laminate it. I used duct tape to hold down the poster board and removed it carefully, but masking tape would be better, I just didn't have any. Also as you can see he started with three to color, but he decided to rip one up instead of coloring it. 🙂
I also decided to do a harder project and drew a rainbow with a cloud and a pot of gold. I then disassembled the rainbow and gave Seth a piece at a time with the correct colors and once he was done all the colors I reassembled the rainbow. Since each piece was only one color Seth was not happy because he couldn't’ choose his crayon. I managed to get red, orange and yellow doing it hand iver hand, but after that he was done entirely. Since I wanted to finish it today I did the other three colors in the same style to match. I was impressed he sat to do as much as he did. (I took care of the cloud and pot of gold myself. His attention span is decent for two but isn't limitless and he was done.)