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Time to put on your green coat and hat and dance some Riverdance - it’s St. Patrick’s Day! Let’s have fun celebrating this green holiday! Here are 5 fun things you can do as homeschool activities with just your own kids or with a group.

1) Pot-O’-Gold Treasure Hunt

A couple years ago, one of our Coop Group moms got super excited to run our St. Patrick’s Day celebration and planned a history lesson, craft, and treasure hunt at our local park. Before anyone arrived, she ventured into the deep forest (it’s a super awesome park) and found a good spot to hide a pot-o’-gold full of chocolate coins (enough for each child to have at least one). The pot was a cauldron, which looked just like a Leprechaun pot. So, after the history lesson and the Leprechaun craft, we all headed off into the forest to find our pot of gold. It was a fun adventure, full of nature, waterfalls, and tall green oaks everywhere. The kids were super stoked that when they found the pot-o’-gold, it was chocolate coins inside instead of plastic ones. This activity can really be done anywhere outside and can be just as much fun in a front or backyard as long as the journey is long enough to feel like a real treasure hunt. You can make a map using cardinal directions and a compass, or simply practice left and right directional queues using number of paces.

2) Have You Filled a Bucket Today?: A Guide to Daily Happiness for Kids Book

Have you heard of this book of kindness? If not, good thing you are now! Every child should know this book. It’s about sharing kindness, and giving caring hearts to others by filling others’ emotional buckets with words of affirmation and acts of kindness. Years ago our Coop Group hosted an enriching experience for our Coop Kids - filling each other’s bucket, a.k.a. pot-o’-gold, with gold coins of affirmations. First, I read aloud the Bucket book to our kids. Then we had a little discussion about it. Next, it was time for the craft - a craft where every kid gets to help fill their friends’ buckets.

1. The Cup: Each child took their cup (make sure they aren’t the waxy exterior kind), wrote their name on the outside, and decorated their cup with markers, stickers, etc. You can skip step 1 and 2 if you want to get fancy and order a set of these smaller cauldrons, one for each child and stick a label on each for each kid to write his/her name.

2. The Handle: Each child picked a ribbon to staple onto their cup to form a handle. That was their pot for their gold.

3. Paper Coins: Each child received about a dozen pre-prepared yellow paper coins (made from cardstock). The coins were large enough to write the name of each child on one side, and then write 1-3 kind, complimentary words about that child on the other side. You can distribute a list of kind words for kids to consider as well to make it easier for picking and spelling. Parent’s helped those who needed it and wrote for those who didn’t know how to read yet. I asked each mom to write a coin for their child as well. (If you are using the miniature cauldrons, make sure that the size of the gold coins are small enough to fit inside the cauldron easily, but also large enough to write a word or two.)

4. Delivery: Once everyone was done writing a coin for each child, they walked around and delivered each coin to the appropriate cup. (The moms did not deliver their coin to their child - not yet.)

5. Read Aloud: The children took turns reading their coins aloud, reveling in the positive, loving words that their friends wrote to them. At the end of their turn, their mom would also read the one she wrote for her child, and then walk over, give her child a hug and deliver that coin into their child’s pot. It was a precious moment for all of us to witness.

6. Take Home: Every child took their pot home and one of my kids still has his from that day - three years later.

3) Leprechaun Traps

Most of us have seen the Leprechaun traps depicted on many websites, pinterest, and more. It’s a ultimate Irish craft project. This is a great opportunity to engineer something super creative, artsy, mathematical, and magical all at the same time. Its a fun STEAM project for sure. Help your child research curated sites to decide which one makes them smile. You can read books like this one to inspire ingenuity.

4) Ireland Theme Day

Put on some U2 or Enya, study Saint Patrick - who had quite the interesting life, curate an “Ireland for Kids” YouTube playlist (Rick Steve’s usually has some good ones), prepare the green glittery (or rainbow) slime ingredients, read a kids’ picture Ireland book (We love this series!), make a potato pancake (They take practice, but they are delicious.), wear green and pretend to be invisible (green makes you invisible to Leprechauns), and read-aloud an Irish legend. Have you explored the many Celtic myths and Irish fairy tales and folklores? So much can be studied past and present on this day - enough for at least one robust theme day. Study the Shamrock, it’s history, symbolism and more. Try some Irish folk (line) dancing. So possibilities are endless!

5) Family Irish Movie Night

Turn on the closed-captioning, and watch a family-friendly Irish film. The great thing about captions is now you can finally understand what the heavy accented actors are saying, but more importantly, your elementary kids get to practice their reading!

There’s so much you can experience with a holiday - and St. Patrick’s doesn’t get enough credit. Since it comes around every year, let’s give this holiday the credit it deserves and make some memorable and fun educational moments. Invite your friends over and have a green ole time.

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