St. Patrick’s Day is a way to celebrate spring and all things green. Even if you are not Irish, celebrating the holiday is a way to add fun and opportunities to teach kids about another culture and another country. So here are five St. Patrick’s Day ideas that you can use to celebrate with your kids!
Pick up a book! One book to consider is the The Night Before St. Patrick’s Day, where two children set traps to catch a leprechaun. When they wake the next morning, they’re shocked to find that they caught one!
Speaking of Leprechaun traps, this is a great post on how to set one. Kids will have fun setting up traps the night before and in the morning seeing gold coins left behind. Other fun ways to add green to the day, is putting green food coloring in the potty, making green milk with food coloring, and having shamrock napkins instead of the every day white ones.
Head to the dollar stores to pick up inexpensive green beads and Irish-themed socks that the kids can wear for the day. Another thing they can wear is something simple you can make. Consider giving the girls a good luck headband or for the boys, a good luck boutonnière that they can wear on St. Patrick’s Day for the “Luck o’the Irish.” Martha Stewart has an easy template to make them. All you need is green felt, green thread, and a store bought plain headband or safety pin.
Similar to wedding cakes that have trinkets inside for good luck, do something similar at home for a Saint Patrick’s Day treat. Bake a cake, tucking in charms before you bake, then serve. The kids loving seeing what they get! Just make sure the charms are safe. If you have young kids, skin the cake concept, and give surprise balls. Scrunch crepe paper into a golf-ball size, then place a charm on top, then wrap a couple of layers of additional crepe paper around the ball. Do it again, and again, until you get a softball sized surprise ball! Tie it with twine and an Irish Blessing. You can find trinkets at party supply stores.
And to close this post today, here is an excerpt from an Irish Blessing:
“…And as you walk the roads,
May you always have a kind word
for those you meet.”