St. Patrick's Day

Earlier this year, I told myself that I would celebrate every holiday I could with my family.  Sometimes in little ways, sometimes in bigger ways.  We have never really celebrated St. Patrick's Day.  I always hated it when people would come up to me and pinch me for not wearing green. 

However, this year, I started seeing some really cute and fun activities to celebrate and teach my children about St. Patrick (who I didn't really even know anything about). Want to know more about him?  Check out this short article, and this short article. 

In a nut shell, he was born in Britain, kidnapped and became a slave in Ireland, came to know the Lord while in slavery, escaped and went back to Britain.  While studying to be a priest, he had a dream about the Irish people asking him to come back and tell them about Jesus. The next day he left and started a 30 year mission in the country that held him captive as a teenager.  He brought about revival and change to the Irish people in ways that had not happened before. 

The first thing we learned is that St. Patrick used the 3-leaf clover to share about the trinity.  Each leaf represented one person in the trinity: God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit....but that it is one leaf together, not three. The girls each made a shamrock.  Hannah cut her shamrock out all by herself!  She did an excellent job! 

Nicole also cut hers out and then she labeled it as well.  You can get the little poem we glued to the middle here.  For some reason, blogger has rotated the picture.

I did introduce the girls to the story about leprechauns and that if you catch you it will show you it's pot of gold at the end of a rainbow.  It was necessary for them to understand our next few crafts.  I'm sort of a realist, so we made a big deal about how it's just a silly story and not really true.  I want them to be able to discern truth from fiction....and I also didn't want to have little girls afraid a leprechaun was hiding under their bed.  If you are into the leprechaun thing, then there are some cute and silly activities and games you can do to try to catch your leprechaun....but it wasn't right for our family.

Next, we strung Fruit Loops into necklaces.  I need to remember this one.  It kept them busy for a while, and they really loved it.  Plus, they got to eat their necklace as a snack the next day.  Hannah was focused on simply stringing the cereal, but Nicole had to follow a particular pattern...at least for a while, and then she would change patterns.

We also finger painted rainbows.  During this activity, I was focused on a few things.  
1. The girls had to actually create a picture and not just slush paint around in one nasty looking blog. 
2. They had to do dots.
3. They had to follow the order of a rainbow (remember ROY G BIV from high school? although we left out Indigo)
They did a great job and as always, loved painting.

Later that day, Yaya came over and helped us make our St. Patrick's Day shirts.  The girls got to experience puffy paint for the first time.

They also made a rainbow out of Fruit Loops.  I am impressed that the girls know the colors of the rainbow, in order.  Well, Nicole does....I'm just happy that Hannah kept the colors ordered.  They also watched an episode  of  Sid the Science Kid about rainbows (have I mentioned before how I love that TV show?  It's great!)

Finally, on St. Patrick's Day, I made a little surprise for them.

This is their pot of gold at the end of their rainbow:)  They really enjoyed it.

Notice the real life shamrocks in the background!

For dinner we ate authentic Irish Beef Stew (very good!) and for dessert we made a rainbow out of fruit.  I love this idea and will be using it for Nicole's birthday party.

At dinner we played a little game that had all of us answering questions about St. Patrick's Day, doing Irish Jigs, and thinking of things that are green.

I think we had a successful St. Patrick's Day celebration. We learned a lot about a man who followed God's calling to a land that once enslaved him (I wouldn't want to go back, would you?), the girls learned about rainbows and how they are made, and we had fun doing some silly dancing and eating yummy food). 

Next holiday is Easter...and that one....you Know we will be celebrating!