Playdough play at home or school supports development and learning in many areas. When children use playdough, they explore ideas and try different approaches until they find one that works.

They compare and contrast objects (“Mine’s a fat pancake and yours is skinny”), actions (“No, don’t cut it! Scrape it, like this”), and experiences (“We’re not making a snake—we’re making a road”).

In their experimenting, children come up with their own ideas, satisfy their curiosity, and analyze and solve problems.

These are all skills that help children learn and succeed in school.

For this activity, we combined playdough with a variety of Saint Patrick’s accessories to create the perfect Saint Patrick’s Day cupcake.

Many children have problems learning the letters of the alphabet. Since letter recognition depends on understanding a sequence of features, the best way to teach children the sequence of features in making a letter is by guided practice.

Because of this, we partake in a variety of letter “games” that encourage your child to recognize, enunciate, and match the concept of a letter to its print form.

Young children learning letters need vivid, concrete language to understand the abstract component of the written word. For this activity, we practiced matching cardboard cutouts of letters to letters written on a four leaf clover.

Puzzle games are an early learning favorite for educators and children alike! By matching the shapes to complete the picture, students enjoy themselves while developing important skills such as problem solving and shape, pattern and color recognition. This game is intuitive and fun, with a variety of shapes designed to help your preschooler think critically.

The skill of effective problem solving is a valuable and important one. As a child looks at various pieces and figures out where they fit or don’t fit, he or she is developing this vital skill.

A puzzle, after all, can’t be completed by cheating! It either works and fits or it doesn’t. So puzzles teach children to use their own minds to figure out how to solve problems and think in a logical way.

Saint Patrick’s Day is celebrated every year on March 17th, honoring the Irish patron saint, St. Patrick. The celebrations are largely Irish culture themed and typically consist of wearing green, parades, and spending time with friends.

People all over the world celebrate St. Patrick’s Day, especially places with large Irish-American communities.

Feasting on the day features traditional Irish food, including corned beef, corned cabbage, coffee, soda bread, potatoes, and shepherd’s pie.

Many celebrations also hold an Irish breakfast of sausage, black and white pudding, fried eggs, and fried tomatoes.

For this activity, we pretended to be leprechauns looking for gold! Using black paper “pots of gold”, green hats, and “gold” coins, your little one scurried around the front yard to retrieve their treasure from the end of the rainbow!

In America, the little bearded sprites known as leprechauns have become synonymous with St. Patrick’s Day and Irish culture. The original Irish name for these figures of folklore is lobaircin, meaning small-bodied fellow. In Irish mythology, a leprechaun is a type of male fairy said to inhabit the island of Ireland. They are a class of “fairy folk” associated in Irish mythology and folklore, as with all fairies, with the Tuatha Dé Danann and other quasi-historical peoples said to have inhabited Ireland before the arrival of the Celts.