One thing for sure is I love a holiday and a good theme. So, when I married a McDermott and became Irish-ish, I was all in for St. Patrick’s Day. Once I had kids, it just grew! Here are some of our favorite family friendly St. Patrick’s Day activities and traditions (with no pinching involved!).
Crafts
I love to decorate the house with holiday crafts the kids have made. This year, my three year old is rainbow obsessed, so St. Patrick’s Day is perfect for her. Below are some links to my favorite (and easy!) St. Patrick’s Day crafts –
Bell Pepper Shamrock Painting
Hand-print Rainbow
Fruit Loop Rainbow
Food & Drink
Sure, before kids, St. Patrick’s Day basically just meant going out and drinking green beer. But with a 3 and 4 year old now, things are just very different. But we still make it fun!
For breakfast we always have green pancakes which my kids always look forward to. You can either use food coloring, or if you want to be sneaky you can puree spinach and put it into the pancake batter. If your kids won’t eat the spinach filled pancakes, this is also a great opportunity for a green (healthy!) smoothie. Here is my favorite recipe https://pin.it/4PJJFDSJAEQJGF.
For dinner, we skip the gross corn beef and cabbage (YUCK!) and go for a Shepard’s Pie. This is a family favorite in our house! While we stray away a bit from the traditional Irish recipe and use ground beef instead of ground lamb, we still enjoy the spirit of the meal. I love this recipe https://pin.it/5rRL7Fm
Lucky the Leprechaun
Let’s be honest, having holiday visitors just makes that holiday more fun. My kids love Santa, our Shelf Elf, The Easter Bunny, etc. So, for St. Patrick’s Day, Lucky the Leprechaun makes a visit. In the past, Lucky has hidden gold chocolate around the house, left green confetti on the table (the confetti made from tissue paper cleans up a lot easier than the metallic confetti!), and left green footprints in our bathroom floor and toilet seat (make a fist and use the bottom of it for the footprint and then your finger to make toe print), and he turned our toilet water green (food coloring) which was, of course, the kid’s favorite.
This year we will make some Leprechaun traps and try to catch the little intruder. This is something new for us, but I found some great little kits in the Target Dollar Spot. Pinterest also has tons of ideas for some DIY Leprechaun Traps. Or, if you have older kids, it could be really fun to let them brainstorm and hit up the recycling bin to see what they can create.
So while St. Patrick’s Day may not be celebrated the same way as it was before kids, we can certainly turn this holiday into some family fun, and then maybe sneak some green beer after the kids go to bed.
Originally published on March 8, 2020.