Inside: Put together a preschool St. Patrick’s Day watercolor activity with tissue paper shamrocks! This idea combines color mixing with fine motor as the paint is squeezed from pipettes. Fun!
Okay, everyone, you know how much I love watercolor art. Well, I found a way to turn a color mixing lesson into vibrant St. Patrick’s Day watercolor shamrocks.
Remember my popular waterfall art? This uses the same method, but on a flat surface, not upright. Using pipettes strengthens the hands and fingers, essential for writing and scissors skills development. Any activity we have done using this nifty tool has been a hit with our preschoolers.
The end result? Well, scroll down to see. They are looking very festive hanging in our window!
CLICK HERE to find more St. Patrick’s Day activities for toddlers and preschoolers!
Preschool St. Patrick’s Day Watercolor Activity
The color of the month during March is green. We do several color mixing activities, such as our cardboard tube painting. I decided to make these watercolor shamrocks be another color mixing activity.
What we used:
- Blue liquid watercolors
- Yellow liquid watercolors
- Pipettes
- Coffee filters, cut into shamrocks
I set plastic trays on our art table, and then the coffee filter shamrocks on top. Because we do so many activities with pipettes, our preschoolers were already familiar on how to use them.
If your preschooler has not mastered this skill yet, I suggest practicing with water and an ice cube tray, as shown in our water transfer activity post.
As the 2 colors are dropped onto the shamrock, a third color appears. This is always magical!
A few of the preschoolers chose not to mix 2 colors, and that was fine. But the majority were more than excited to see what would happen using 2 colors.
When finished, move shamrocks onto a clean dry tray.
You can leave them as is, mount onto paper, or hang.
I love how they hang gracefully in our window!
Now, head on over to my pin board to find hundreds more St. Patrick’s Day and rainbow activities!
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Love this idea, can’t wait to try it with my little ones. The spray starch – is this starch for clothes?
Yes, this is starch you spray on your clothes before ironing. Or so I think! Can you tell I don’t iron very much??
I love how colorful the collages are! 🙂
That’s what I loved – the intensity of the colors. When mounted on black paper, the colors REALLY popped.
i love this idea. Always looking for something cool to do with 5 grandkids who are 8 and under. How exactly did you color the pasta?
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This is fantastic how did you colour the pasta thank you x
Like this idea but what is it exactly that they are learning, aside from the obvious colours? Curious to try but afraid will look like a mess rather than a teaching activity.
Great question! They used their fine motor skills spooning the macaroni onto the paper. They then used their fine motor skills squeezing the glue. They arranged the macaroni. And yes, they learned about colors. I personally am not afraid of mess, because I see the learning that is taking place, but I understand how others might not see it this way. I just love watching them explore in a hands-on way.