Happy St. Patrick's Day!!!! Check out these fun ideas!

This is how we celebrated St. Patrick's Day in our household this year.

1) I sent my daughter to school with Shamrocks hair chalked on her head.

2) I made green pancakes (just add food coloring) in the shape of shamrocks and served green milk. I topped the pancakes with some whipped cream and green sprinkles.

3) My son did a Puffy Paint 4-Leaf Clover painting.

4) I made Leprechaun Treats! They are magically delicious!

How to Make Puffy Paint with 3 INGREDIENTS!

Making puffy paint is super easy and you can really make it in to any color you want.

All you need is:

• Shaving cream
• Elmer's Glue
• Food coloring

Mix together 2 parts shaving cream to 1 part glue and mix in as much food coloring as you need to get your desired shade.

Start painting and have fun!!

Leprechaun Treats! Only 4 Ingredients!!

These are magically delicious!!

Super simple to make (basically the same thing as making Rice Krispy Treats) and are very sweet and delicious and your kids will think they are great!

Leprechaun Treats

1 bag mini marshmallow

3 T butter

green food coloring

7 C Lucky Charms cereal

Directions:

• Place marshamallows and butter in a large bowl and microwave on high for 1 minute until butter is melted and marshmallows are softened
• Stir in food coloring until evenly blended
• Stir in cereal
• Pat in a greased 13x9 cake pan
• Allow to set for at least 30 minutes before cutting and serving.
• Enjoy!

17 St. Patrick's Day Accelerated Reader Books for 3rd and 4th Graders

This time I thought I would read my daughter's class a book that is between 3.5-4.5, but I did include a couple of bonus ideas of a 4.6 level books. Just a little something for me to remember to request when she is in 4th grade and if I am reading to her class then. I thought this might be a good list to work from next year as well. If you noticed in my Valentine book list, I try to stay away from books that are about the history and customs of a holiday. While these are good learning books, it is usually a lot of information to have to retain and I would rather set the kids up to succeed to be able to take their tests and get good scores.

3.5
Dear Mr. Leprechaun: Letters from my First Friendship by Martin Burton
The Leprechaun in the Basement by Kathy Tucker
The Leprechaun Who Lost His Rainbow by Sean Callahan
Shannon and the World's Tallest Leprechaun by Sean Callahan
St. Patrick's Day from the Black Lagoon by Mike Thaler

3.7
Clever Tom and the Leprechaun: An Old Irish Story by Linda Shute

3.8
Luckiest Leprechaun by Justine Korman
The Story of the Leprechaun by Katherine Tegen

3.9
The Leprechaun's Gold by Pamela Edwards
The Luck of the Irish by Brendan Paulsen

4.0 
Jamie O'Rourke and the Big Potato by Tomie De Paola

4.1
Mary McLean and the St. Patrick's Day Parade by Steven Kroll
The Leprechaun Under the Bed by Teresa Bateman

4.2
Leprechauns Never Lie by Lorna Bailan

4.4
A Fin St. Patrick's Day by Susan Wojciechowski

4.5 
Fiona's Luck by Teresa Bateman
Leprechaun Gold by Teresa Bateman

BONUS IDEAS!
4.6
Traveling Tom and the Leprechaun by Teresa Bateman
The Ring of Truth by Teresa Bateman

A Leprechaun's Visit

 You may want to click on it to make it bigger to print off, but here is what it says (I wrote it to work with the trick my daughter had planned with painted candy to look like gold to lure a leprechaun to our home.)

Poem from a Leprechaun

Candy painted to look like gold
Is a trick that will not be told
This lil leprechaun you did not fool
I hope you have learned more than this at school

Tis silly kids that played this trick
Too much of this candy will make you sick
So, I give to you my favorite sweets
Rainbow colored and flavored treats

Until next year, when I will try again
And see if you’ve grown smarter then
Maybe a leprechaun you will trap
But you better be quick and do not nap

Even More Pinterest Inspiration

This is my hair in the picture, but I followed the instructions from Oh So Pretty The Diaries. This was a fun up-do idea! I will use this again!

My daughter wanted to see if leaving her tooth in a different location would result in a different present from the Tooth Fairy (read all about that in my Tooth Fairy Post & her recent social experiments). The idea for this one came from Filth Wizardy.

I thought this was a neat picture, so I had to try it for myself.

 My daughter asked for some special valentine hair, so I replicated this idea from PrincessHairstyles.com

And get a load of these delicious treats I made for Valentine's Day. The recipe for the Whoopie Pies came from What's Cooking with Ruthie, but I used Red Velvet cake mix instead. And the raspberry chocolates idea came from Lauren Conrad, but as you can see I used white chocolate chips instead of semi-sweet.

Love these Shamrock Hairclips that were inspired from Potlucks on the Porch (and the one without rhinestones is a pin - my son had to have one too!)

Try It Tuesday: Paper Plate Leprechaun

I have another fun paper plate craft to share with you just in time for St. Patrick's Day. 

Supplies needed: paper plate, washable paint (I used orange, yellow & white to make a flesh color), paint brush, googly eyes, yarn, dot markers (optional) and construction paper.

Directions: Paint entire paper plate on the convex side of the plate and allow to dry. Glue pieces of yarn on top of the head. Glue on a hat & bow tie (I cut them out for my preschooler) and googly eyes. Use a dot marker to make the nose and mouth.

Check out my Other Paper Plate Crafts:

3 Different Lion Paper Plate Crafts

Spider Web Craft

Pumpkin # 1

Pumpkin #2

Bug

Ghost

Frankenstein

Spider

Mummy

Turtle

Jellyfish

Clothespin Cow Craft

Fish

Coming Soon! Pirate!

St. Patrick's Day Crafts & Food Ideas

A toilet paper roll leprechaun and some pipe cleaner shamrocks kick off our St. Patrick's Day (at-home -- due to sick family) activities.

How about some some leprechaun play-doh? I made that with the Kool-Aid Playdough recipe and just added gold glitter!

And how about some paper leprechaun dolls, which are free to print!

Or check out the breakfast I made for the kids: green scrambled eggs, ham (I missed out on Green Eggs & Ham on Dr. Suess' birthday, so this serves as a do-over for that), kiwi & rainbow toast. Later in the day I made Shamrock Shakes (sorry, no pic!)

And finally, here is a hat and a couple St. Patrick's Day Crafts that my daughter made at school!

Happy St. Patty's Day! Did You Catch a Leprechaun?

Showing off their poems and treat from the leprechaun

I never in my wildest dreams thought I would ever be pretending to be a leprechaun, but last year my daughter told me her plans to catch one and I wanted to encourage her imagination and creativity and told her to go for it. That didn't change this year and she set out to catch a leprechaun again (using a similar trap to the one she created last year - that didn't work, maybe next year she'll mix it up more.)

The whole scene with footprints leading up to the porch, the knocked over trap & the notes & treats left for the kids.

All of the footprints (my daughter noticed they were in a rainbow shape, which was total luck of the Irish because this leprechaun didn't do that on purpose.)

The failed trap with it's fake gold.

My very quickly thought up poem. Didn't know she was doing this again, next year I will plan ahead & try harder.

She's so excited to have discovered the footprints & went in search of the leprechaun in case he was still here.

Fingerprint Clover Art

 To generate some excitement in our house for St. Patrick's Day, I suggested to my daughter that we make some fingerprint clovers. I demonstrated to her how to make a four leaf clover with making four thumb prints in a clover shape. She watched and then started to work on her own creation.

She made three four leaf clovers, drew stems and then thought her art project needed more thumbprint images including butterflies, ladybugs, a dragon fly, a flower, the sun and some clouds. All of these ideas were hers. I just loved watching her go with the idea of making objects out of finger prints.

This is her finished project. It really makes me wish spring was really here, but it will be soon. Other than a marker and a colored pencil, everything else she made using Melissa & Doug Jumbo Multi-Color Stamp Pad.

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