We had such a fun time on St. Patrick’s Day this year! It started with green pancakes (plus sprinkles!). I don’t have photos because they were eaten so fast but it was nothing fancy. Just good old fashioned green food coloring added to the batter. The kids loved it!
After Dad left for work, we had to grocery shop. As soon as we walked in, the girls saw leprechaun hats. They were $5 each and I almost said no way. But they looked so cute wearing them! So we grabbed two (and I’m glad we did - we ended up using both for homeschool later in the day!).
Back at home, I sent the girls upstairs for quiet time while I inflated some green balloons. I rolled out brown paper on the table and sprinkled on some shamrock confetti from Hobby Lobby. Then I added a handful of gold chocolate coins. (Disclaimer: just like the pancakes, we ate all the coins before I could get a photo, whoops!)
We ate green kiwi and ham sliders while reading “How to Catch a Leprechaun” by Adam Wallace & Andy Elkerton. It gave the girls a few ideas for making their own leprechaun traps later in the day!
Then it was time to start school for the day!
CHOCOLATE GOLD COIN CHART
For Kindergarten Math, we started by counting the chocolate gold coins. Then I made a hand-drawn chart where she could document how many coins were on the table. We ended up with 4 large coins, 5 medium, and 4 small. I don’t know why Luna drew shamrocks when she could have just put the coins on the paper … we honestly make this stuff up as we go along, ha!
We also used the coins + shamrocks to work on other math concepts like more/less, addition, subtraction, estimating, etc. Here are a few examples:
How many total coins do you have?
What size coin do you have the MOST of? What about the LEAST?
If you add all the large gold coins and all the small gold coins together, how many gold coins do you have?
If you ate ALL the chocolate coins, how many would you have left? (Answer: ZERO!)
Draw a circle and ask your child to estimate how many shamrocks she can fit inside. Then have her test her hypothesis to see how many she can actually fit inside. Luna guessed 5 but ended up fitting 50!!
While Luna worked on her chart, our preschooler (Stella) traced her name in glittery gold + green markers!
(Did I mention these are all regular, everyday homeschool ideas? The kind you can throw together last minute? Not exactly Pinterest worthy but 100% kid approved!)
CHOCOLATE GOLD COIN HUNT
We each ate a gold coin and then I hid the rest around the house for the girls to find before we switched to English. The girls used their leprechaun hats (their idea!) for collecting the coins. Some were hidden in tricky places so after a while I started giving fun little riddles. Like, I hid one by the window so I said “You’ll find one where the sun shines through!” Again, don’t feel bad about making this stuff up as you go along!
After we found (and ate) all the coins, it was time for English!
LEPRECHAUN HAT SIGHT WORD GAME
For my kindergartener, I wrote about 50 sight words on scraps of paper and folded them. To keep things St. Patrick’s Day themed, I added in words like GOLD and GREEN.
We put them all on the floor and set her leprechaun hat beside us. Here’s how to play: Take turns unfolding a piece of paper, saying the word, and tossing it in the hat. If you get the word wrong, put it back in the word pile!
To keep this lighthearted and not too stressful, I mixed in some super easy words and a few more challenging ones. I also made sure to “mess up” sometimes - my kindergartener LOVES to correct me! And it’s a good reminder that we ALL make mistakes sometimes. Remember that the goal here is to review some words and connect with your little one … not to stress over little mistakes.
My preschooler loved this one too! Instead of words, you can do colors, shapes, or letters. Stella’s been working on the letters of her name so I wrote one letter on each paper scrap. (You can make multiple scraps for each letter … five S’s, five T’s, etc). We played this game at least four times in a row!
LEPRECHAUN TRAPS
Which brings me back to those leprechaun traps. (Remember? This was another thing I didn’t plan but came up while we were reading the “How to Catch a Leprechaun” story. Isn’t homeschooling the best?!)
We were out of gold coins (since we ate them all!) so the girls had to come up with another way to lure the leprechauns. Luna REALLY wanted to use sprinkles, I said ummmm no. Too sticky! Then she tried making her own coins using aluminum foil and yellow markers but that didn’t work great either. Finally, she sprinkled a jar of shiny sequins outside our door, propped up a box with a stick and tied a string to it. And when she pulled the string, it actually worked! A real life leprechaun trap!
A few minutes later, she’d rigged it up to go under the door frame and up the stairs to the bedroom so she could see out of the window and pull the string when the leprechaun came. It was pretty cool! And extra special because it was self-directed. She had to figure out what supplies to use and how to improve on her design all with the help of her little sister :)
I’m NOT big holiday kind of girl but this low-key day turned out to be super fun for all of us. Which is (I think) the best kind of homeschool day :)
With love,
Lace & Co.
