A Leprechaun Came to Play

In years past we have celebrated St. Patrick's Day wearing green and eating corned beef & cabbage for dinner. This year I decided to have some fun with the day. We have been doing St. Patrick's Day themed activities for the last week and reading "The Story of St. Patrick" and "The Night Before St. Patrick's Day." In "The Night Before St. Patrick's Day" the children are awaiting the arrival of the Leprechaun's and trying to catch them. This gave me several ideas to celebrate St. Patrick's Day. I also got a couple of ideas from this blog and combined them all into today.

Here is the note our Leprechaun left for Jake:

The Leprechaun came to play
It was too late I could not stay
A trick or two I have left for you
A mess you might find
But 20 gold coins I have left behind
A few special treats
Next year I'll try to be neat
Happy St. Patrick's Day

Not the best rhyming letter, but it is what I came up with. The gold coins were scattered throughout the house along with green shredded paper bag filling. The Leprechaun left a box of Lucky Charms cereal(sometimes sugary cereal is ok for breakfast...right?) & a couple of green gifts (the green shirt for Jake to wear today, green bubble wand, & some green glow in the dark bugs(the shirt was only $4 & everything else was a $1 so not too much was spent). The Leprechaun left a small mess...Jake was really worried about the mess he would leave the night before & I didn't want to have to clean up a huge mess. Everywhere a mess was made gold coins and green grass were left behind.

It was so much fun and Jake loved it. He still want let me clean up the green grass scattered throughout the house since "the Leprechaun left the grass for him." Guess we will live with that on the floor for a few more days. I am sure we will keep several of these ideas for next year, but would love to hear if you have any fun things you do for St. Patrick's Day.