One of the best things about having kids is being able to make things fun for them (and let’s be honest, yourself too), especially on holidays. With a little bit of inspiration and planning, any day can be magical, even St. Patrick’s Day! If you’re stumped on what you can do to make this St. Patrick’s Day a fun celebration for your family, look no further than these 4 tips:
Festive Outfits
No matter what your plan is for the day, wearing festive outfits is sure to make it more exciting. Whether they go to school in all green or you go all out with St. Patrick’s Day leggings, there are plenty of ways to work the theme into your family’s attire.
There’s also plenty of St. Patrick’s Day gear in stores if you want to add some accessories like a Leprechaun hat, shamrock headband, funky sunglasses, or green beaded necklaces.
Plan a Party
St. Patrick’s Day parties are always a good time, from unique treats to themed games, you can make the day special for your kids and their friends. Need some inspiration for entertaining activities? Start with these:
- Bake shamrock-shaped cookies for them to decorate
- Set up a scavenger hunt to find gold coins (give each kid their own “pot” to put their gold in once throughout the game)
- Play “Who’s the Leprechaun” (a St. Patrick’s Day twist on tag)
- Have a gold coin toss where teams have to throw gold coins and try to make it into the pot
- Host a dance-off
For a special treat, send kids home with delicious goodie bags filled with gold coins, lucky charms marshmallows, rainbow candy, beads, and more.
Since St. Patrick’s Day falls on a weekday this year, you can either throw your party on the weekend or have a small playdate after school instead.
Arts & Crafts
Getting crafty is a great way to spend quality time with your children while also keeping things festive—you never know one of these activities might even turn into one of your family traditions. Here are a few ideas to get your craft session started:
- Print out coloring pages so their friends can color or paint their own rainbow to take home for their parents
- Create a thumb-print clover (all you need for this one is some green finger paint and black and white print outs of a four-leafed clover)
- Rainbow Twizzler necklaces (cut the Twizzlers into smaller pieces and place them on a string to create a colorful necklace)
- Rainbow hanging decoration (cut some paper plates in half and allow the children to apply colorful tissue paper to create their own rainbow—they can even add some longer pieces to hang down and create whimsical decoration to take home)
- Sand art (use colorful sand or stones to create a rainbow in a jar, paint the lids gold for extra festive flare)
Have all the craft supplies set up and ready when they arrive so they can dive right into the fun.
Bake Some Treats
Baking is a fun way to celebrate any holiday, especially St. Patrick’s Day. If your kids are younger, you may want to do some prep work before they get started, but most of these recipes are easy for them to help you with.
Some of my favorite ways to satisfy my sweet tooth with St. Patrick’s treats include:
- Rainbow marbled brownies (these are blondies with food coloring)
- Green cupcakes with vanilla frosting and gold sprinkles
- Pot of gold cupcakes (make regular cupcakes and top them with rainbow sour punch strips and gold sprinkles)
- Shamrock cut out pound cake (using a shamrock-shaped cookie cutter at flycalf.com)
- Grasshopper pie
- Green chocolate-covered Oreos (just use green melting chocolate)
- St. Patrick’s Day popcorn (dipped in green melting chocolate)
If your family favors the savory flavors, try these recipes:
- Festive bagels (use food coloring to make green cream cheese)
- Green eggs and ham for breakfast
- Corned beef and cabbage for dinner
And of course, you need something to drink, try making fizzy lemon-lime punch! Whether your kids have a potluck at school, or you want to make these to have at home, these kid-friendly recipes will surely be a hit.
Hopefully these ideas will get you on the right track for making the most of spending St. Patrick’s Day with your kids.