Once again, the Let’s Explore Blog came through with a great activity! Just in time for Saint Patrick’s Day, Amy offers up a free downloadable book called “The Leprechaun’s Walk.” You print it out, and then your kids fill out where the leprechaun walks to (“over the ________________, around the ______________” etc.) and draw accompanying pictures. Then they color in and cut out a little leprechaun puppet, so they can make him walk through the story. Let’s Explore suggests attaching the puppet to a stick or straw, but we didn’t really have anything readily available, and the boys seemed happy enough just moving the leprechaun through on their own.

They loved this activity. You can see here how intently they’re working on their books (we also just moved the side-of-the-road desks into the library, and they’ve been having a good time having a more centrally-located working space). Eli had me write in the words for him, and Henry did it all himself. I dig how such an open-ended activity inspires creativity — Eli’s leprechaun walked through a farm and milked some cows, and Henry’s leprechaun walked through a jungle. I also realized that Henry really needs an assignment of some sort to get him to focus and do more detailed drawings. He spent a long time on this book, and kept adding more animals and more details. Eli loved that he could memorize the words, so he could “read” it to Dave when he came home. Three minutes of work on my part = an hour of happy quiet kid activity!