St. Patrick's Day Snacks and Activities ☘️

Rainbow Toast, Marshmallow Stamping, Shamrock Concentration Game, and more!

Mar 10, 2023

For some, St. Patrick’s Day is meant to celebrate the legendary history of an escaped slave who lived 1500 years ago. For others, it’s a chance to party hard. But for most of us, it’s just a lighthearted time to wear a lot of green and rainbows. This post is primarily in that third category 😉 though we share a bit about the real St. Patrick at the bottom of this post. (Spoiler: He wasn’t a Leprechaun. He wasn’t even born in Ireland.)

Here are the ideas in this newsletter. Feel free to scroll down to what looks most fun to you. Enjoy!

Rainbow Magic Trick
Green Muffins or Pancakes
Shamrock Concentration Game
Rainbow Toast
Marshmallow-Stamping Shamrocks
Rainbow Eyeshadow
Bonus: The Story of St. Patrick

Rainbow Magic Trick

This is a fairly impressive magic trick that literally even a toddler can do!

Here’s what the audience sees: lidded glasses (or jars) filled with water. (We used these.)

The thYour child will dramatically say “Abracadabra” or tap the glasses with a wand (or whatever their signature move is.) Then, they will shake the bottles, and the clear water will transform before your very eyes!

It’s very satisfying to watch, and there’s a good chance many of your guests—child and adult alike—won’t be able to figure out how the water transformed.

Ready for the solution?

Here’s the secret: swirl some gel food coloring in each lid with a Q-tip! Isn’t that fun? Credit goes to the DadLab Youtube channel for the idea!

Green Muffins or Pancakes

Here’s a chance to sneak in some greens!
Using your normal pancake recipe, throw a big handful of spinach in a blender with whatever liquid you’re using. Then mix in the dry ingredients and fry them up how you normally would!

For muffins, Yummy Toddler Food’s blender muffin recipe is fantastic.

Preheat oven to 375 and grease your muffin tin.
Place the following into a blender: 2 ripe bananas, 2 cups spinach (we did four big kid-handfuls), 3/4 cup milk, 1/4 cup honey, 1 cup rolled oats, 2 Tbsp melted and cooled butter, 2 eggs, 1 tsp vanilla extract, 1 tsp baking soda, and 1/8 tsp salt.
Blend until very smooth. It should look like a green smoothie.
Add 1 cup of whole-wheat flour and pulse or stir.
Pour batter into the muffin tins and stir in chocolate chips if you choose.
Bake for 18-20 minutes, serve, and savor 🤤

Shamrock Concentration Game

Our family had a lot of fun making (and playing) this game inspired by Handmade Charlotte. All you need is cardboard, scissors, and paint! Our version doesn’t look as pretty as hers, but it was kid-made, so it’s a win 🏅

First, paint one side of the cardboard in some kind of uniform pattern. Let dry, and cut into square tiles. Any even number will due; the more tiles, the harder!

Then, make pairs of designs on the other side of the game pieces. We used watercolors and finger-painted 3-leaf clovers and 4-leaf clovers in different colors. We also used markers to draw symbols like the Irish flag, a rainbow, a pot of gold, and even snakes (because of the legend that St. Patrick drove all the snakes out of Ireland.)

Once you’re ready to play, lay down all the square tiles pattern-side up, and take turns flipping over two tiles at a time to try to find a pair. When someone makes a match, he or she gets to go again. Whoever gets the most tiles by the end of the game wins!

Bonus, this game helps you work on this month’s personal growth theme: attentiveness. You have to really concentrate on what’s behind each tile and keep it in mind. You can obviously make this harder for older kids and adults by increasing the number of tiles and designs! Have fun!

Rainbow Toast

We try to avoid food coloring because some kids have really bad reactions to it, but this activity might be worth an exception to the rule! Simply mix milk with neon food coloring and paint some bread! You can use Q-tips, but paintbrushes work better.

After toasting, the colors are still super bright!

Since the bread absorbs the milk so quickly, this activity takes awhile to do 👌 and you can play some Celtic music in the background to make it even more of a multi-sensory experience!

Marshmallow-Stamping Shamrocks

If you’re not afraid of using paint and you have some leftover S’more ingredients lying around, squirt some green onto a paper plate or lid and invite your kids to stamp shamrocks and four-leaf clovers onto paper using marshmallows or mini-marshmallows! Make a stem using a paintbrush.

We turned our papers into encouraging cards to give away that say “I’m lucky to know you.” You could also make bookmarks!

Rainbow Eyeshadow

For some extra festive fun, apply eyeshadow in a ROYGBV pattern. Don’t forget to do your own eyes, too; your kids will remember how cool you were for participating. Plus, it’s pretty! 😉

Bonus: Learn About St. Patrick

People of the Christian faith in particular will be inspired by the twists and turns in the life of this escaped slave. The Torchlighters have a 30-minute episode about his life. Watch it with your kids because there are scary parts; also, you’ll learn a lot! You can also read the Tomie DePaola picture book Patrick: Patron Saint of Ireland or pray the famous prayer that he’s credited for writing.

Our family had a ton of fun with all these activities, and I hope you enjoy them, too. Let me know what you try, or if you have any fun traditions!

Warmly,

Hope

P.S. The posting schedule has been a bit off this week! I’ll share a trip planning post tomorrow, then be back on the normal Monday/Wednesday/Friday schedule next week. ☺️