St. Patrick's Day mobile

This idea was adapted from one I found online recently. Since we're not so good yet at coloring in the lines around here, I modified it a bit to make it more age-appropriate for a younger two year old. This would also be really neat to replace the paint with tissue paper, streamers, or even stickers in the colors of the rainbow!


You will need:

• Rainbow shape (I drew lines with crayons in the appropriate colors). I used cardstock, but you could easily cut a paper plate in half, if you have those on hand.
  
• Paints (or as I said, tissue paper, streamers, stickers, markers, crayons... whatever you want your child to use!)
• One green shamrock cut out of construction paper
• One "pot of gold" cut out of construction paper
• Hole punch
• Yarn
  

You can really see what I mean about the second batch of finger paint being a better consistency than the first. It all works fine, but I'm already looking forward to using the red and blue paints for some summer fun outside! Stay tuned... the warmer months will be here soon... right?


Since we just did full-blown, sloppy finger painting, we used thumbs only on this project. :)


Have your child dip their thumb into each paint color, and then "dot" the paint on the rainbow. This is where I was wishing I hadn't tucked away the Do-a-Dot paints for her Easter basket... would those ever have been handy today! :)


You may need to guide your child on where to put their colors, as I did.


But, as you can see, she did some of it totally on her own as well. :)


While you're waiting for the paint (or glue, or markers...) to dry, punch holes in the shamrock and pot of gold.


When the rainbow is dry enough to be handled, use the yarn to tie the pot of gold and shamrock pieces onto the bottom. You'll need to punch a couple holes in the rainbow as well. We tied another piece of yarn on the top of the rainbow to give it something to hang from.

If your child really likes this piece of artwork, switch out the shamrock and pot of gold for white puffy clouds after St. Patrick's Day has passed. Then you can enjoy it all spring! :)