I love to celebrate every holiday with my kiddos. And since we homeschool, I love getting creative and taking a day off of the normal lesson routine to observe and hopefully convey effectively the importance of each special day.
Every year on this day, I always do a fun "green" only meal. Whether it's green pancakes and green milk with green butter and green syrup, or a plate filled with various naturally/unnaturally green items, my kids love it!
Here's what we did today for lunch:
Food colored some cinnamon applesauce, pickle spear, popcorn with green M&M minis, raw organic broccoli with slightly colored green ranch veggie dip, and I tried my hardest to "paint" a four leaf clover on a piece of sliced provolone. They ate it all up and loved how silly it was. Other ideas for green foods would be celery, green apple slices, kiwi, honeydew, sweet green peppers, veggie straws, etc. And as long as you have green food coloring, you can pretty much make anything turn green. :)
For some school fun I made up three quick games, one for each level academically that I have. You can make these games more difficult if you have older ones.
color sort
For Miss Avery, I quickly cut out six circles and placed them in a regular sized muffin tin. I took a marker for each color of the rainbow and colored one color per circle then placed a circle in each tin.
I had some various rainbow colored puff balls and put them in a separate container for her to pull from.
She had a blast naming all of the colors and sorting all of the balls into the correct color tins. This activity is great for an older toddler or young preschooler like Avery. This kept her busy (she did it over and over again) for a while. And it's practical enough to keep for another day....or a moment when she is simply into everything.
rainbow addition
For Carter, my 5 year old Kindergartener, I made up a game that would encourage some extra addition practice. He enjoyed this game so much that I just may make a more extensive version and include subtraction.
I was in a hurry when I made these games. I literally did it all in twenty minutes because the kids were excited for new activities and Olivia was threatening to reorganize the entire homeschool closet as I was using it. So I used what I had in front of me. In this case, I took 3 red solo cups and had some leftover rainbow stickers from Olivia's rainbow birthday party (go here for that post) and just simply stuck them on each cup. I then wrote with a sharpie a number on each cup that would represent a possible answer. I took rainbow Popsicle sticks (you can buy a pack of many at the Dollar Tree) and wrote a simple addition problem on each one that equaled to one of the answers on one of the cups.
Carter then had to mentally answer each problem on each stick and place that stick in the correct cup. He had so much fun and got faster as he went along.
pot 'o gold syllable sort
For my first grader, Hunter, I wanted a game that encouraged reading, vocabulary, and syllable counting. I took a white sheet of paper and glued the edges of two yellow pots (glue edges ONLY!!!), sprinkled them with a bit of gold glitter, and put a number on each. I took the same rainbowy Popsicle sticks that I used with Carter's game and wrote St.Patrick's Day related one and two syllable words. Hunter then had to clap while saying each word aloud and sort the sticks into their respective pots of gold. He, too, had a lot of fun with this game and it gave us an opportunity to discuss some of the words that he didn't know of before.
Add in a fun history lesson about how amazing St.Patrick was and what the big deal is about this Irish holiday and I'd say you just had yourself a "pinch-free", super fun holiday with your kiddos.
Now it's back to laundry and to ice that triple chocolate fudge cake that has absolutely nothing to do with St.Patrick's Day aside from the fact that I need chocolate.
Love, Alicia