Have you got a leprechaun in the house? I’m not sure about you, but my leprechaun likes to wear purple and pink and mess around with glue and glitter. If you’re Irish or just pretending to be for St Patrick’s Day, tissue paper and some black card are all you need to create lovely window hangings.
First, go to a web site with printable crafts. Find a shamrock, a rainbow, and other St Patrick’s Day symbols. I like The Coloring Spot for printable crafts. Look for crafts that are easy to cut out around the edges and the center. No fiddly bits, unless you want to be cutting forever – or you’re looking to frustrate your four-year-old!
Make the shamrock large enough to cover most of the page. You can resize the image in a word processing program before you print it. Print out a black and white copy of the shamrock or other printable onto thick white paper, the thickest that can fit through your printer successfully. Ask your preschooler to cut around the edges of the shamrock. Cutting builds fine motor skills, even if it is sometimes an exercise in frustration. Poke a hole in the middle of the printable and cut out the center of the shamrock. The adult gets to do this bit, unless your child is particularly adept at cutting.
Tear green, yellow, and white tissue paper into long, wide strips. Tear other colors too, if you have them. You don’t need many strips. Turn the shamrock over and paint some white glue thinned in water over the edges of the shamrock. Attach the tissue paper at each end. Gently overlap the tissue paper until you have covered the entire back of the shamrock in strips of tissue paper. Use a paint brush to gently dab glue dots on the places when edges of tissue paper meet each other.
When the shamrock has dried, turn it over and punch a hole in the top. Hang it from a string in the window as a preschool-style “stained glass” piece.