St. Paddy's Day

We have a wee bit o'the Irish blood around here in the Mirecki household - thanks to me father's father of the northern coastal Ireland Gallaghers. And since we are so proud and grateful for all of our heritage, no matter how small,  we decided this year to learn about St. Patrick's Day in our homeschool schedule. And we had  have a whole lot of fun while we were at it!

It all started out with the idea to do a couple of crafts, and talk about rainbows.

Well, a couple crafts turned into an entire lapbook (of which my hubby is quite familiar with since his mom did them with him all during their homeschool years!) on the meaning of St. Patrick's Day, rainbows (including the REAL significant meaning of them - God's promise!), clovers, etc. 

(You will find links to the items we used inside the lapbooks below - the links I remember anyway.)

ROYGBIV

Large Clover and Happy St. Patrick's Day (I didn't end up using this clover as we ran out of room, but I used another and the words for the title)

Shamrock

Noah's Ark Minibook

God Made the Rainbow colouring picture

St. Patrick's Day unit printables (we used only the leprechaun cut out and a couple colouring pages and some shamrocks)

Rainbow Book and Colour Matching Cards

History of St. Patrick's Day

My boys absolute favourite tidbit of information about St. Paddy is the fact that he was kidnapped by PIRATES from England when he was a boy :D His life, what is known about him anyway, is quite interesting really - he was sold as a slave, worked as a shepherd, escaped back to England, then returned to Ireland after he became a priest and converted the Irish people to Christianity! 

MY favourite bit is the "legend" about how St. Patrick used the clover to illustrate the Trinity - 3 divine beings in One - God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. 

We also made some green rice krispie squares! 

I had hoped to stick some skittles on top in a rainbow pattern, but that turned out to be overly ambitious as I couldn't even get one to stay on top without sliding off! So we decided to just eat them on the side :0)


I added 1 teaspoon of green food colouring to the marshmallow mixture and used a clover cookie cutter to make the shamrock shapes.

Along the baking (and sugar theme :D) we tried making some Meringue Cookies. Growing up, we made these quite often and I only just found out that these are my husband's FAVOURITES! Score two points for me! The only problem was, I misread the directions and beat the eggs until "frothy" instead of "foamy". Turns out there's a big difference :D But while they didn't rise up like the fluffy "clouds" I had hoped they would, they were still really tasty! (Bonus: we added in some smarties for the raindrops ;0)

We found the Magic School Bus episode about rainbows here for part 1 and here for part 2 for our science aspect.

The morning of, green pancakes in the shape of shamrocks! 

My children, who typically INHALE pancakes, wanted nothing to do with these. It's a good thing I made some "normal" ones to go along with it! :D (We also had green grapes and I had hoped to make some green smoothies but alas, I had forgotten my usual purchase of kale on the last grocery shop!)

In Canada, McDonald's (which I, by the way, DESPISE) came back with their Shamrock Shake! I nearly had a heart attack when I saw it in the coupon book and begged my hubby to take us all for the treat. He obliged us and oh man, oh man, oh man, it is as good as I remember it being some 15 plus years ago! However, I ordered the medium, and I felt pretty ill after finishing most of it and swore them off for another 15 years :D (Once again, the kids wanted NOTHING to do with the green, so they shared a McFlurry and sundae.)


Hopefully next year I will be able to make some rainbow or pot of gold cupcakes like these ones over at Fickle Pickle and these delicious looking peppermint patties - I wanted to do them this time around, but at the risk of putting us all into a sugar coma, I opted to leave something to look forward to for next time.

I hope you all enjoyed your St. Patrick's Day as much as we did! Top o' the mornin' to ya!

"May the road rise up to meet you, may the wind ever be at your back. May the sun shine warm upon your face and the rain fall softly on your fields. And until we meet again, may God hold you in the hollow of his hand." ~ Irish Blessing