I love Crafts!!

I love to do crafts!  Having a PreK child gives you plenty of opportunity to do a little crafting throughout the day.  I often use crafts to keep my 5 year old’s hands busy.  He gets practice using his fine motor skills by cutting, drawing, coloring and even some writing.  However, you can’t leave him alone or he will cut the curtains, linens and anything the scissors will cut.

Today, my son had to miss pre-school due to illness, so I capitalized on the opportunity to work on various fine motor and cognitive skills.  You can see the shamrock project that he completed.  This was a last minute craft I printed from Enchanted Learning to have him work on while I worked on another subject with my 12 year old.   First my son completed the dot-to-dot; working on drawing straight lines from one dot to dot another, and following the sequence of numbers from 1 to 42.  After he completed that, I thought he could work on building the muscles in his hand by coloring it in and I reminded him to try and stay in the lines. While he was so diligently coloring, I remembered we had glitter glue that I had bought for him to use, because he loves any type of media.  He was so excited to use something new!  I made sure to work on sensory issues by having him move the glue around with his index finger.  We also made this cute little green hat which gave him a chance to practice his cutting skills.

While all this was helpful to my sons development and fun for all of us, reviewing the life of St Patrick was the most important lesson today.   He was not Irish.  He was kidnapped by Irish pirates and forced to live as a slave in Ireland.  Later, he went back to Ireland to minister to the people of the country that held him captive.  He used the (three leafed) Shamrock as way to explain the three persons of the Godhead. His heart was full of love and forgiveness for the people of Ireland.  He was an example for us of a servant of God who walked out the “great commission” that Jesus gave before he ascended back to his seat at the right hand of the Father.  So today, it isn’t about the luck of the Irish for our family, but the faith of one man who was obedient to the Lord and a great example of one who truly did love and forgive like Jesus. 

Happy St. Patrick’s Day!