Bring out your green! St. Patrick’s Day is coming up on March 17. It’s a fun day packed with parades, good luck charms, and all things green. This Holiday started as a religious holiday, but over time it’s become a celebration of Irish culture. Celebrating different Holidays is so much fun for kids! It is a chance to change our daily routines and learn about cultures, traditions, and have some fun! We enjoy St. Patrick’s Day in our house. We love to build leprechaun traps, try new recipes, and decorate.
Books
Three ways to Trap a Leprechaun by Tara Lazar – Another great book by Tara Lazar! It’s a fun and exciting little story about determination. A delightful picture book about problem-solving. I know they say not to judge a book by it’s cover but this story is as fun as the the cover is beautiful. My picture doesn’t do it justice. The rainbow sparkles and the coins shine! My kids are obsessed with this book right now. If you like to check out more Tara Lazar books chick HERE for more books and Free Printables.
How to Catch a Leprechaun By Adam Wallace – My boys love seeing all the mischief the leprechaun gets into and point out where the leprechaun is on each pages. As with other books of this series, it’s fun, colorful, and entertaining. The children in the book all are making traps to try to catch the leprechaun, but he gets away! It’s a great book for making predictions and also thinking up your own ideas on how to catch a leprechaun.
How to trap a Leprechaun By Sue Fliess This book has it all! Bright colors, flowing rhymes, diverse characters, inspires children to be creative… what more could you want. This is a simple story that focuses on a group of children who come together to trap a leprechaun. No matter how many things they try, the leprechaun escapes, but all is not lost. He leaves a tiny note that challenges the kids to try again next year. At the End, there is a note to parents with tips on how to build a trap with your child. My boys could not wait to design and build leprechaun trap after reading this book.
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Leprechaun Trap
According to the tradition, one must believe leprechauns are real to trap one. I have heard many different things about what happens when you do catch a leprechaun. Some say you have good luck, they will give you Gold or you get a wish. All those sound great so we built leprechaun traps last year and yet did not catch one.Here you can see my two boys different attempts a catching a leprechaun.But this year will be different!!
Why take the time to make a Leprechaun Trap? It’s not only a fun way to celebrate the day of the Irish, but it also teaches kids important STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) skills. You can take the time to talk about simple machines. The process of making a plan and testing out your theory.
How do I make a Leprechaun Trap? You can make a leprechaun trap out of ANYTHING— empty boxes, an empty oatmeal canister, bowls, cups, magnetic tiles, Lincoln logs, or LEGOs. Of course you’ll also need plenty of craft supplies to make the trap tempting to a Leprechaun. Temper paint sticks, pipe cleaners, markers, paint, beads, glitter, craft sticks, colored paper, tissue paper, – pretty much whatever you have lying around the house. Make sure to have something to lure in your leprechauns too. Leprechauns love coins, lucky charms, or rainbows.
The next morning we did not find any Leprechauns in our traps. But one did visit and leave a note. He told us that he had so much fun playing in our obstacle courses that he decided to leave us some “gold” candy. And did some decorating down stairs. He was even kind enough to bring out our Easter decorations from the garage. What a thoughtful Leprechaun.
Breakfast
After all that excitement, my kids were hungry and ready for Breakfast. These waffles are a very easy to make. I actually just bought Bisquick Shake’N Pour Buttermilk Pancake Mix from my grocery store. I think I used two bottles but it will depend on how many waffles you want to make. I divided the batter into quart size ziplock bags. I added some food coloring to each back and mixed it up. Once you have all your colored batter ready snip one corner of the ziplock bag so you can use it like a piping bag. Make sure to spray your waffle iron then make a rainbow using your different colored batter. The key to keep the nice bright color is just cook it enough. Do not over cook otherwise it will turn brown. Then add whip cream and sprinkles and your will have a breakfast your kids will be talking about for weeks!! And randomly a year later.
Math Time
There is a FREE printable at the bottom of the page. If you print it out and place it in a plastic sheet protector then you can you dry erase markers on it. My boys would roll a dice and add that many coins to the first half of the shamrock. Then repeat and add that many coins to the other half of the shamrock. Then they would write the math sentence or use more coins depending on age and ability.
Journaling
After all that fun this morning, I had two boys that were eager and ready to write in their journals. Make sure to take advantage of that excitement and give them plenty of time to retell all the fun they had.
