Green Day!

I know it's a little early for St. Patrick's Day, however, I need to adjust the schedule to finish my project before our presentations.  Also, I love holidays and festive days so I can do fun creative things with the kids.  The leprechaun has already been sneaking around our house, so I thought I would make a day of green!

We started our day with green eggs and green milk for breakfast.  My son requested next time to have green toast! The timing on this was perfect because at his school they will be eating green eggs and ham.  He is not a big fan of eating eggs.  So I am glad he tried them at home first so he knows what to expect at school.  After breakfast we got dress and wore our green apparel. 

Then we read a St. Patrick's Day story.  The girls and I went to the library and I asked for the St. Patrick's Day books.  The librarian said they didn't have many and showed me where they were.  There were four books on the shelf and three of the books were the same story!  So I took one off the shelf glanced through it and brought it home.  It turned out to be a really cute book.

The story was about a town decorating for St. Patrick's Day and the people wanted to paint the entire town green.  A little man came and need help with his cows so the people of the town helped him.  However, they didn't finish painting in time for St. Patrick's Day so while they were sleeping the little man painted their town.  When they woke up everything was green. 

My kids and I went to our kitchen and took out green peppers, paper, and green paint.  I cut the peppers in half, they dipped the peppers in paint and then onto their paper.  This creates shamrocks! So cool and so easy.  I learned that you need just a little paint.  Not too much or it won't look like a shamrock. 

Next, we made green Jell-o. My kids love Jell-o.  During this activity we worked on measuring, stirring, and pouring.  They are doing so much better than when we started!  After we put the jell-o in the fridge we made chocolate pretzels.  These are the pretzels with a Hershey kiss melted and M&M's on top.  Thanks to Pinterest for the idea.  I found green mint M&M's so we used those.  W set the pretzels on the cookie sheet, L unwrapped the chocolate, and M placed the chocolate on the pretzel.  I put them in the oven at 200 degrees just long enough for the chocolate to melt. I took the cookie sheet out and we topped them with green M&M's to look like a shamrock.  So easy and so delicious!  This helped L with her counting.  She even counted the bowls of Jell-o by herself.  So proud of her! 

The children took out their Cooking Journals while I cleaned up a bit.  They drew pictures of what we made this morning.  They even labeled their pictures on their own.  (Their idea, so proud!)  This was a great recall exercise.  They thought about everything we did in the morning.  Discussing how everything was made and the color green.

Then it was time for lunch. We had green tortilla sandwiches with a green surprise in the middle, a pickle!  They had fun making the sandwiches and they loved eating them!  A+ for trying something new!

I am glad I had a book to connect to our Green Day.  The children referred to the book throughout the morning, recalling what happened in the story, talking about green, connecting the book with what they were doing.  This project for today started out just being geared toward St. Patrick's Day fun.  However, in the middle of it, I thought, we could do a different color a day and learn our colors that way.  L needs to learn a few more colors yet. So I thought this would be perfect for her.  We were able to work on shapes during lunch, counting, measuring, motor skills, as well as, St. Patrick's Day and helping others.  Throughout the day the children would name items that are green.  If they saw something green they would say it or they would name an item that is green.

I am feeling more confident with this project and I keep coming up with more ideas.  The amount of learning I can incorporate into our cooking projects astonishes me.  Instead of doing separate lessons for each concept, I can include everything in one cooking project! Time saver, more fun, and the children really respond to and comprehend the material.