FREE St. Patrick’s Day Hat Do-a-Dot Printable (Montessori-Inspired Phonics Instant Download)

St. Patrick’s Day is just a fun holiday for kids and a great theme for learning activities. So it’s our new theme along with lots of free St. Patrick’s Day printables, including this free St. Patrick’s Day hat do-a-dot printable. As usual, the free “h” for hat do-a-dot printable is an instant download and super easy to prepare.

 

Note: Be sure to read to the bottom of the post where you’ll find lots of ideas for using do-a-dot printables along with at least one free do-a-dot printable for each letter of the alphabet!

Montessori-Inspired Printables at Living Montessori Now

My daughter, Chrissy (a former Montessori child), and I are partnering to bring you a series of Montessori-inspired printables. The printables are typically themed and use a number of Montessori principles (although you don’t need to be a Montessori teacher or homeschooler to use them):

• They use isolation of quality.
• They use photographs or realistic images to emphasize reality. Whenever I can, I’ll tell you the specific name of the object or animal featured on the credits page. This month’s do-a-dot printable has a photograph of a St. Patrick’s Day hat.
• They typically use traditional Montessori colors such as red for consonants and blue for vowels.
• They use lowercase letters, which are what we introduce letter sounds with in Montessori education. (Children tend to pick up the uppercase letters without being introduced if they’re introduced to the lowercase letter sounds.)
• They often feature themed printable versions of Montessori materials.

Free St. Patrick’s Day Hat Do-a-Dot Phonics Printable

To download the hat do-a-dot phonics printable, click here and then click on the file image in the upper right corner of the PDF to save to your computer (just choose where you want it saved).

Montessori-Inspired Activities Using the St. Patrick’s Day Hat Do-a-Dot Printable

Disclosure: This post contains some affiliate links (at no cost to you).

Tray with St. Patrick’s Day Hat Do-a-Dot Printable and Shamrock Gluing Activity

Note: This is just one example of how you can use the do-a-dot printables. There are many ways to use our do-a-dot printables. Scroll down to see examples from previous posts. Just choose an activity that’s appropriate for your child’s age and skill level.

I used a Multicraft tray, shamrock confetti, glue stick with disappearing purple, and a bamboo condiment cup to hold the shamrocks. A shamrock punch with green paper would work well for fine-motor work and making shamrock shapes, too.

You can use a variety of tools for transfer activities, such as quick sticks, sugar tongs, or toast tongs. (Note: With toddlers, be extra careful to avoid leaving out materials, such as pom poms or glass gems, that could be a choking hazard. I typically keep small objects up out of reach for toddlers and get them out when I’m directly supervising their work.)

You can add erasable crayons or markers to a laminated page for preschoolers to work on tracing skills. I don’t have my grandkids trace letters or numbers before age 3 except with their fingers. Above age 3, I place colored pencils on the tray for children who are ready for tracing work. If you laminate your printable, you can use an erasable crayon like the Melissa & Doug Learning Mat Crayons or Crayola Erasable Crayons. If your page isn’t laminated, you could add a pencil or colored pencils. I often do that. If you only have a 2-year-old or other young preschooler who’s not ready to write letters, you can just leave off the crayon or pencils as shown.

Scroll down to see lots of ideas for using our do-a-dot printables for a variety of ages and themes.

/H/ for Hat and Blending the Word “Hat” Phonics Activity and Gluing Work

This type of activity is wonderful for fine-motor development, increasing attention span, and reinforcing letter sounds.

My almost-3-year-old grandson, Caleb (Chrissy Chitwood‘s son) already knows his phonetic sounds, thanks to sound games and small objects with sandpaper letters. Caleb was fascinated with learning phonetic sounds and learned them much earlier than normal. I didn’t have him do structured writing activities with pencils, though. I still only have him trace letters on sandpaper letters, wooden tracing boards, or our sand tray.

For toddlers, I typically use the do-a-dot printables for vocabulary, hearing the beginning sound of a word, and fine-motor skills. Generally, with toddlers, I’ll just focus on the /h/ sound at the beginning of “hat.” 

For a phonics lesson with young toddlers, I might casually say that hat starts with /h/ (the sound, not the letter name). This is just to introduce hearing the phonetic sound. I don’t focus on the letter “h,” although I use the printable that we already have available. We often focus on the child hearing the beginning sound by saying something like, “Hat, /h/, hat.”

Both of my younger  grandkids love working with sandpaper letters and letter sounds, so we do more focused work on the letter sounds. This is what I do with preschoolers who are learning their letter sounds. We follow the order shown in this post along with adding the featured letter. I don’t worry about going out of order for the monthly theme.

If you want to know more about how to introduce the /h/ sound, check out my post on how to teach letter sounds using Montessori principles.

I only use printables with toddlers that can be used for hands-on work, such as do-a-dot work, scissor cutting (cutting strips), or another type of printable that can be made into a manipulative. Printables when used with manipulatives are great for fine-motor development, work on important skills, and fit with the hands-on activities that are developmentally appropriate for toddlers.

With Caleb, we focus on the proper formation of the letter “h” by tracing the sandpaper letter.

Caleb also enjoys blending activities and can easily hear the words, so I wrote the word with sandpaper letters. I then said each sound so that Caleb could blend the sounds to read “hat.” I only do that with a child who is already comfortable with the phonetic sounds.

Caleb really enjoyed the work gluing shamrocks to the letter “h.” His favorite way to do it was to make a dot of glue with the glue stick and then place a shamrock on the dot. He was very proud of his work!

If you would like help with introducing phonetic sounds, introducing objects with sounds, or beginning phonics in general, check out my DIY Beginning Montessori Phonics with Preschoolers.

For older children who already know their letter sounds but still enjoy do-a-dot work, I add the print movable alphabet word building, phonogram work, another hands-on activity to go with the do-a-dot work, and/or cursive movable alphabet and word analysis work. (Note: These examples have more than one type of additional activity, which I like for older children.)

As always, adapt your presentations for your unique child!

More St. Patrick’s Day Resources

Amazon Affiliate

• Free St. Patrick’s Day Printables and Montessori-Inspired St. Patrick’s Day Activities
• Free St. Patrick’s Day Hat Do-a-Dot Printable (Montessori-Inspired Phonics Instant Download)
• Free St. Patrick’s Day Cutting Strips (Montessori-Inspired Instant Download)
• Homeschool St. Patrick’s Day
• Montessori-Inspired St. Patrick’s Day Activities
• Montessori-Inspired St. Patrick’s Day Math Activities at PreK + K Sharing
• 40+ St. Patrick’s Day Sensory Tubs
• St. Patrick’s Day Playdough Activities
• Montessori-Inspired Rainbow Activities
• Montessori Color Mixing Activities – Rainbows of Color
• Montessori-Inspired Rainbow Printables and Montessori-Inspired Rainbow Activities
• Montessori-Inspired Rainbow Activities with Spielgaben {Free Printables}
• Free Eat-a-Rainbow Printables and Montessori-Inspired Activities
• Free St. Patrick’s Day Printables and Montessori-Inspired St. Patrick’s Day Phonics Activities
• Free St. Patrick’s Day Songs and Rhymes for Circle Time
• St. Patrick’s Day Cutting Tray with Strings of Beads
• Kids’ St. Patrick’s Day Activities Pinterest Board

Montessori-Inspired St. Patrick’s Day Pack for DIY Cards and Counters, Number or Letter Matching, Number or Letter Basket, Bead Bar Work, Hands-on Math Operations, Number or Letter Salt/Sand Writing Tray, Letter Tracing, DIY Movable Alphabet, and Creative Writing (subscriber freebie, so just sign up for my email to get the link and password – or check your inbox if you’re already a subscriber).

Free Do-a-Dot Printables and Ideas for Using Them

I love the versatility of do-a-dot printables! If you’re doing a month-long theme, you could easily change out the type of do-a-dot activity weekly to add interest. Here are four ideas of hands-on activities for any of our do-a-dot printables from my frog do-a-dot printable post (see post for details and materials used).

Just click on an image to go to the post with the related free printable!

Note: I’ve arranged the following gallery in alphabetical order, although some posts have two do-a-dot printables (and two different letters). You’ll find at least one free do-a-dot printable for each letter of the alphabet!

Also, I don’t introduce letters in alphabetical order. You can find out the order in which I introduce letter sounds here. I deviate from that order for our unit studies, though, and focus on a letter that’s simply related to our unit. That’s in addition to our other letter work.

You can see all our free do-a-dot printables with the latest at the top here.

For complete themed alphabet do-a-dot packs, see our Animal Alphabet Do-a-Dot Pack, Spanish Animal Alphabet Do-a-Dot Pack, and Healthy Food Alphabet Do-a-Dot Pack available for purchase in the Living Montessori Now shop.

Learn more about my eBook Montessori at Home or School: How to. Teach Grace and Courtesy!

If this is your first time visiting Living Montessori Now, welcome! If you haven’t already, please join us on our Living Montessori Now Facebook page where you’ll find a Free Printable of the Day and lots of inspiration and ideas for parenting and teaching! And please follow me on Pinterest (lots of Montessori-, holiday-, and theme-related boards), Instagram, and YouTube. You can find me on bloglovin’ and Twitter, too.

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