A fun St. Patrick's Day activity that I've had out recently is sifting "leprechaun treasure" out of a bowl of cornmeal. I originally wanted to use a true strainer, but the cornmeal wouldn't sift through it. Fortunately I had one of THESE sifters from Montessori Services. It has much larger holes and was perfect for sifting treasure. I put some shamrock erasers and some green and gold beads into the cornmeal for the children to scoop out.
Here is how I set this up on our stationary work station. The child uses the strainer to scoop out treasure. When demonstrating this work I showed them how to gently shake the strainer over the bowl to allow all the cornmeal to fall through. Then they pour the treausre into the green bucket. When all the treasure is removed from the bowl, they may pour it back into the bowl and use the strainer to "hide" it again. One suggestion I have after putting this out in my classroom is to add a small broom and dustpan for sweeping up spills. Even though my students were asked NOT to put their hands into the cornmeal, we still had lots of spilled cornmeal that I or my assistants cleaned up at the end of each session. In hindsight the addition of a set like THIS ONE from Montessori Services would have been perfect!
Here is a close-up of the strainer. LOVE IT! I am thinking it will be fun with lots of other straining activities.
Close-up of the treasure.
I love this. I think I will adapt this to Easter things since I don't do much with St. Pat. Thanks also for the inspiration to get my name 3part cards done. I am just waiting to take a few more photos tomorrow and insert them into my prepared cards - a few kids were absent when I took photos for Valentine bags and I'd like all the photos to have the same background. I really appreciate all the wonderful ideas that you share.
Posted by: Mrsmelva.wordpress.com | March 15, 2010 at 07:53 AM