For this week’s crafts we are channelling my Irish half and going with St Patrick’s Day crafts for our theme. This St Patrick’s Day craft idea does need a bit of pre preparation; cutting out the necessary shapes before hand, but once this is done it is very simple to do this with your toddler.
St Patricks Day crafts can be fun even if you are not in the least bit Irish especially this little shamrock man as his little legs and arms bounce about. My kids had loads of fun just running around making the legs bounce by giving him a good shake – its the simple things with kids right?!
So my advice to you for these St Patricks Day Crafts is to pre cut out your shapes if you are doing this with little kids. You could cut out as you go, but I find that my preschoolers just get bored with the waiting and so the fun starts to evaporate. Once you have the bits cut out this really is a perfect St Patrick’s Day craft for toddlers as it is quick and easy. There is glue involved so could be a bit messy, but read on to see how you could also make a complete no mess version.Â
What you will need:
For this craft activity you will need green card, black card (you will only need a quarter of an A4 sheet of black and maybe half of green), scissors, a pencil, an A4 sheet of white paper, glue and some stick on eyes.
 The How:
- Draw the shape of a shamrock onto your green card. The easiest way to do this is to draw three intersecting hearts, but you could go free hand
- Cut out the shamrock shape. This should use up most of a 1/4 of a piece of A4 card (just to give an idea of the size)Â
- Still with the green card draw two smaller shamrocks for the hands and cut these out. I found this bit fiddly and mine were far from perfect. As you can see from the pictures. I was preparing this for a playgroup I had to do around 40 hands and it was slightly labourious!
- Take the black card and draw the shape of two little boots. Cut these out and set asideÂ
- Cut four long strips from the shorter side of the A4 sheet
- Concertina them so that they look like this when unfolded
- Â Let your toddler assemble them using the glue and finally draw on a big smile.
These are great as decorations as when hung up their legs and arms bounce. My kids like to blue tack them onto the windows,Â
St Patricks Day Crafts – NO MESS Shamrock Man
If you are not a fan of the mess made by glue when making St Patricks Day crafts or any other crafts for that matter then you can still do this Shamrock Man, but make some substitutions
Instead of cutting out card for the body you could use sticky baked foam. You will then be able to
lift off the backing just enough to stick on the arms and legs.Â
Use sellotape to attach the hands and feet and finally get googly eyes that are self adhesive.
Job done a no mess version.
To make things even easier to prepare you might like to get a Shamrock shaped hole punch so cutting out the hands is a breeze and your toddlers can even do it themselves. Â
I haven’t found a punch big enough to cut out the body shape, but do let me know if you find one!
3 other things to do with your St Patricks Day Crafts Shamrock Man
- Attach a magnet onto the back and put them on the fridge like with the Easy Fridge Magnet Craft for ToddlersÂ
- Get some self adhesive badge pins and turn the shamrock men into their St Patrick’s Day rosette
- Use sticky backed foam for the body and stick your man onto blank card stock to make a 3D (ish) St Patricks Day Card for loved ones
