Religious Shamrock Craft for St. Patrick's Day

Catholic ABC's Week: 24 
Letter of the week: T
Theme: Trinity
Saint of the Week: St. Therese
Craft: Trinity Shamrock Craft

This week we are learning about the letter "T", and what better time to learn about the Trinity than for St. Patrick's Day?! I just love when the whole world is celebrating Catholic feast days! :-)

For this craft, all you need is green fun foam, plastic craft string, and stickers. I actually got a whole package of shamrock shaped fun foam from the Dollar Tree- 8 of them for $1, and half of them were already glittery! (Although the stickers won't stick to the glittery ones). The plastic string is also available at most Dollar Trees, and certainly at craft stores. If you can't get shamrock shaped foam ready to go, you can cut them out yourself- just do a google search for a shamrock template. You can also print shamrock lacing cards for free from Chalk in My Pocket.

Once you have your shamrock, just punch holes around it with a regular hole puncher.

Give your kids some plastic string and let them lace their shamrock. You could also use yarn if you put some tape on the end or have a plastic needle for them to use. Lacing is good for their hand eye coordination and motor skills. It's also a lot of fun! ;-)

Once their shamrock is laced, have them add symbols of the Trinity. We used a heart to symbolize God the Father, a cross for God the Son, and a Dove for God the Holy Spirit. (The heart symbol was totally inspired by Karen's Adventures in Mommyland!) I actually got all the stickers from AC Moore- it was a package of stickers for Vacation Bible School. The whole book of them was $1.

These were easy to make and came out pretty cute!

This craft is another good match for my St. Patrick Trinity Song for kids! We also read our Catholic Children's Treasure Box Book 17, which is about the Trinity. Have you even heard of the Treasure Box Books? I need to type up a whole post about these books to I can rave on and on about how adorable they are!

Grab Bag Ideas for the Letter T: (be sure to check out the Classroom Script for directions on using the grab bag.) Truck, Train, Tiger, Table (from a doll house), Tennis ball, Triangle, Tank, Tap shoe, Tape, Tea bag, Tea cup, Tie, Tissue, Tongue (from Mr. Potato Head), Tools, Toothbrush or Toothpaste, Top, Tractor, Turkey, Turtle, Tu-tu, Twisty tie, T-rex. (Avoid words that start with "Th" for new learners).

For More Resources, check out the Catholic Toolbox lesson plans for the Letter Tt. (Her Tt lesson is on the the Ten Commandments.)

Catholic ABC's runs here at Catholic Icing every Wednesday with the new letter of the week. You can find the details of the program here.

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Childrens Song for St. Patrick's Day

As some of ya'll already know, my 5 year old daughter loves to craft! But my 2 year old son... not so much, actually. However, I have found that he seems to respond really well to music! I've been trying to work more music into our activities, so we made up a little song for St. Patrick that goes with our Saint Patrick puppets. :-)

So, I tried to figure out a way to sing a children's song with a paper bag puppet on my hand in a you tube video without looking ridiculous, and basically determined there was no way around looking ridiculous... so I just went with it! ;-)



Lyrics to St. Patrick's Day Song: a song about the trinity for kids.
(Tune of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star)
St. Patrick shows to you and me a shamrock for the trinity.
The Father and His only Son plus the Holy Spirit are 3 in 1...
St. Patrick shows to you and me a shamrock for the trinity.

This really was a fun song to sing with our puppets, and kids eat stuff like this up with a spoon! Happy almost St. Patrick's day everyone! :-)
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Saint Patrick Puppet Craft {And a Linky!}

Ya'll know I've been obsessed with making paper bag saint puppets, so today I bring you Saint Patrick! :-)

The one above is made with just a lunch sized paper bag, paper, glue, and googly eyes. I drew on the crosses with a marker. Here's a picture of the pieces before they went together:

His beard is shaped like a heart. 

I folded the paper in half and cut it out like this:

I also folded my paper to cut out my shamrock:

Then I assembled him like so with school glue:

Before I glued my pieces together, I let my daughter use the pieces I cut out to trace her own pieces so she could draw and cut them out herself. She just turned 5 last month, and she made this whole puppet by herself! I am so proud! 

 

I love how she glued the staff way up on his hand like he's balancing it! For her shamrock, she traced our shamrock shaped cookie cutter and cut it out. I tried to get her to use cotton balls for his beard, but Vee from Paper Dali has a St. Patrick coloring sheet where his beard is black, and well.... Vee is a lot smarter than Mommy. Lol! ;-)

Here's mine with a cotton ball beard:

The one above has a pipe cleaner staff, and the doily shamrocks I got at Michael's. I love them! :-) Wa also used some gold glitter glue to put the crosses on our shamrocks. Remember while you're doing this to explain to the kids how St. Patrick taught about the trinity using a shamrock.

 

I decided they were so cute that I wanted to display them on the mantle in our dining room! So I just opened up the paper bags and slipped them onto liquor bottles.

The cute banner came from the Dollar Tree.

I hope you enjoy this Catholic St. Patrick's Day craft- I know we did! These puppets are just too much fun to make with kids! Now I want to see what you've been doing to celebrate the feast of St. Patrick! If you have a post to share about St. Patrick's Day, please link it below! :-)

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St. Patrick's Day Shamrock Rosary for Kids- A Fun Craft!

When we were making our little rosaries the other week, we also made some trinity shamrock rosaries since St. Patrick's day is just around the corner! :-)

I also had some cute child-made ones, but my kids ran off with them. I'm having such a hard time photographing their crafts recently! Lol!

Aren't these shamrock doilies too cute?! I got them at Michael's, and overpaid. I think they were $2.50 a package. I have a serious thing for doilies. :-)

To make these, follow my directions for making one decade pipe cleaner rosaries, and then bend them into a shamrock shape. You can find directions for bending pipe-cleaners into shamrocks here. I would suggest green beads and pipe cleaners, but to each his own. :-) Teach your kids the story of St. Patrick while they're making their shamrock rosaries.

My kids watched Patrick, Brave Shepherd of the Emerald Isle while we made ours. This is such a cute movie for St. Patrick's Day! My kids really enjoy the CCC movies.

If you don't own this movie and the thought of spending lots of money on Catholic movies in this economy freaks you out, I'd like to introduce you to "Catholic Netflix". Ok, really, they're called Pius Media, but they really are just like Netflix for Catholics, and they have ALL the Catholic movies you could ever want to rent! If you're already a member, don't forget to add this movie to your current queue! :-)

Also, I'm going to be hosting a St. Patrick's Day liturgical link up later this week, so get your St. Patrick's Day posts ready! I love seeing all of your ideas!

Related Posts:

• Catholic St. Patrick's Day Ideas
• Saint Patrick Crafts
• Shamrock Trinity Craft
• St. Patrick Printables
• St. Patrick's Day- Fun Food!

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Catholic St. Patrick's Day Ideas

More St. Patrick's Day ideas, really? What can I say, guys. I just couldn't help myself! :-)

I am so in love with these Celtic Knot Cookies 

from Sprinkle Bakes. I might have to try these!

 Love this Irish vegetable platter from Waltzing Matilda!

Yay for finding cute food that's healthy! ;-)

Check out this craft from Karen in Mommyland.

Family Fun had the idea of celebrating another Irish saint on 

St. Patrick's Day- St. Bridgid! Don't miss this St. Brigid's Cross Craft!

This St. Patrick coloring sheet from Catholic Heritage was submited

by Jennnifer T. Thanks, Jennifer! I love it!!!

Here are some great directions for braiding this

Celtic Cross from cord.

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Make a St. Patrick's Day Shamrock Bowl

After doing our trinity shamrock craft, my daughter and I were looking for more St. Patrick's day shamrock fun! As some of my facebook fans already know, we recently had the stomach flu here, which left me with an abundance of green 2 liter ginger-ale bottles, so here's what we did!

First, we made these adorable little shamrock bowls.

They were very simple to make!

These shamrock bowls are cut from the bottom of 2 liter bottles.

(This is important. 3 liter bottles are too thick to cut. Trust me ;-)

Here's basically how you cut the bottom:

That's it! Just cut with scissors or a box cutter!

When you turn it around, it's a little shamrock bowl!

I thought these might also be cute to use for a 

Feast of St. Patrick tea:

And may I suggest using 'green tea' ;-) ???

After the bottoms of the bottles were gone, I cut out some

shamrock shapes from the sides of the bottles as well.

These are really quite pretty with a sort of 'stained glass' look.

I punched some holes in the shamrocks and

my daughter strung them onto embroidery thread:

We made a whole garland and them draped it across the mantel!

It's very pretty when the sun shines in!

And I even found a use for my shamrock bowl on my mantel!

I think we're just about ready for St. Patrick's feast day around here! :-)

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Shamrock Trinity Craft

I've been seeing a lot of crafts that show the shamrock symbolizing the trinity, and I love them! St. Patrick must have been very clever to think of explaining the trinity this way! One God, three parts, brilliant! ;-) Here's the one I made:

I started with a wooden shamrock from a craft store. It cost 50 cents.

First, I  painted it green. After it dried, I wrote "Father, Son, Holy Spirit"- one on each of the shamrock leaves- with a regular black sharpie marker. Soooo much easier than trying to write it in paint! Then I printed out a picture of St. Patrick and glued it to the middle of the shamrock. I finished it off by tying a cute little bow around the shamrock stem. I wanted to go around the outside of the shamrock with green glitter glue, but we didn't have any.

If you don't want to write out "Father, Son, Holy Spirit", then you can use symbols in stead! Here are some popular symbols I've been seeing to represent the parts of the trinity:

• Father- Eye (for the Fathers "all-seeing eye"), a church, a heart, or a bible.
• Son- A Cross
• Holy Spirit- A Dove

You can cut your shamrocks and symbols from anything- green paper, fun foam, whatever really. If you're worried about drawing a shamrock yourself, you can use these printable shamrock templates from Family Fun!

Here are some other versions of this craft I've been inspired by! :-)

I found this trinity shamrock over on 

Growing With My Girls.

Find great directions for making this shamrock

on Everyday Catholic.

Wildflowers and Marbles made this cute shamrock.

Find directions over on her blog!

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St. Patrick's Snake Banishment

I'm sure you've all heard the legend that St. Patrick banished all the snakes from Ireland. I find this story so intriguing given the fact that there really aren't any snakes in Ireland. You can read more about the legend here. I've been seeing some cute St. Patrick's day "snake banishing" games around, and I thought "Why stop there?" Lol! So here are some fun snake foods, crafts, and games for celebrating St. Patrick's story on his feast day! :-)

These snake pops from Gourmet Mom on the Go

just might be too cute to banish ;-)

Here's a craft from Make and Takes where you craft a snake
  from a tie. Whose husband doesn't have some extra

neck ties that they don't (or shouldn't) wear anymore? ;-)

I love this snake art project from Art Projects for Kids

because it teaches the concept of overlapping. Also, with the

way the paper here is colored half green half blue, it really looks

like the snake is being "cast from Ireland" into the sea! :-)

Here's a great snake art project for little kids from

Ramblings of a Crazy Woman. Very fun!

This snake cake from Family Fun is made using a bunt pan.

Here's a snake craft from Preschool Rocks where you can

make a snake from plastic Easter eggs.

Love this "Slithering Snake-wich" from 

Better Homes and Gardens!

Wouldn't this be cute at a St. Patrick's Day party?

Snake Banishing Games:

1. You "Cast the snakes out of Ireland". Do this by having children take turns throwing rubber snakes into a basket and seeing who can get the most snakes in the basket. There's a picture of this version here on Shower of Roses.
2. Take a bunch of rubber snakes and hide them like you would hide eggs for an Easter egg hunt. Have the kids "round up" all the snakes in Ireland so you can banish them!
3. Or for small kids, just scatter toy snakes around in a taped off circle (the island of Ireland) and let them take turns "running them all out". (Pictured below)

Don't forget that you can use the snakes you made crafting for the games above! Hope you have fun with your kids learning about St. Patrick! :-) These would also be great games for an All Saint's Day party!
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