Our St. Patrick's day...

Last year in Pre-K Skip's teacher made the day SO much fun he talked about it for weeks so I was mindful not to let this year's teacher (me) disappoint him! Yesterday we made paper Leprechaun beard's thanks to Brandi who gave us a link to a great craft site. We also made one hat for the boys to share since we hadn't enough green cardstock on hand. They didn't mind a bit. On that same site I found a coin game which I incorporated into our lessons since Skip is working on money and coin values right now in Math. I took two green envelopes and had the boys trace 10 coins (quarters, dimes, nickels and pennies) on the front. It was Skip's job then to label each coin outline (i.e. 25, 10, etc.) We then put the coins inside their respective envelopes and I told them we'd finish the "game" today.

We had green pancakes for breakfast, which I then arranged to look like a shamrock, and colored both their milk & the juice green (Harry wasn't phased in the least, and drank up quickly!)

Of course all through school Skip kept asking if it was time for the game yet, and I held him off until he had fininished his math, language, reading, and spelling review. After that it was "recess" and I sent them upstairs for a snack while I finished our pot for the gold. I took a small pail and covered it with black construction paper, then filled it with candy coins and green beads. I then hid the coins in the classroom - in easy to spot locations. I put four pieces of paper inside Skip's envelope which read: "It" "is" "on" "the". In Harry's envelope I put a paper saying "trampoline". The "pot of gold" I put outside on the trampoline of course.

They had a ton of fun finding the coins, matching them to the correct outlines, and then solving the riddle. Once they knew where the pot of gold was, they threw on their sneakers & coats and ran outside to get it!

This was a cheap, fun, simple yet educational activity. The boys absolutely loved it and it turned out better than I imagined. They thought the green beads were cool too, and wore them ALL day, and made us wear them too. Even Grammy, who stopped by for a visit, got to wear some. Best of all, BOTH boys worked together as a team.

They thought eating candy before lunch was a great thing too!

Our traditional corned beef & cabbage dinner topped off Harry's first St. Patrick's Day here in the USA with his family. He had a blast. Hope y'all did too!