St. Patrick, Snakes, and The Loch Ness Monster

For stART (story + ART) today, we combined play, and craft time, with a geography lesson, to go along with Sheila MacGill-Callahan's The Last Snake In Ireland, A Story About St. Patrick...


...with a little Loch Ness legend thrown in. The story artfully weaves the legend of St. Patrick driving the snakes from Ireland, with the better known legend of the Scottish monster.

I printed out a couple of labeled maps of Europe (you can find oodles of them, by Googling "labeled maps of Europe"). I saved one to my computer, so I could print it out, full page size, and then crop, and enlarge it, so I had mainly Ireland, and Scotland showing.

I used the first map to show the children where Scotland, and Ireland are in relation to Europe. The second map, I covered with wax paper, so T could fill in the land of Ireland, Scotland, and surrounding areas, with Play-Doh, while the rest of the children made tiny snakes...


...and a bell, for our Lego "St. Patrick" to use to drive the snakes into the ocean...


...except for the last one, of course, which ended up in the mysteriously, magical waters of Loch Ness.


I had originally planned on having the older children cover the countries in green, and the ocean in blue Play-Doh, for our story reenactment, but they were so taken with the idea of the monster, that they used up almost all our Play-Doh making their own versions, first.






In fact, the entire rest of the morning, and part of the afternoon, was spent Googling, and watching video footage, and documentaries about the beast. And, I now find myself making planning another quick run to the library, and putting together a Loch Ness monster themed snack, for this evening.

You'll have to come back later to read about that, but you can find many more children's book themed crafts, and projects, right now at A Mommy's Adventures' weekly stART (story + ART) link-up, or more geography themed projects for children, at this week's Geography and History link-up, hosted by Children Grow, Children Explore, Children Learn.

It's great to be a homeschooler.