St. Patrick's Day with little ones!

Celebrating St. Patrick’s Day before kids came along used to be a somewhat straightforward affair.

Gather up your friends (or squad, which I think is what the cool kids are calling that these days) and toast with green beer, either out at a bar, where they dye it green for you, or at home, which is what my circle of friends and I usually did in my twenties.

It didn’t matter if it was on weekend and you got to sleep in, or on a weeknight, which meant you had to stumble through work the next day.  You were drinking beer, either green or Guinness, on St. Patrick’s Day, end of story.

Yeah, it doesn’t really work that way once you have kids, especially ones that are three and under.  There are still middle of the night wake-ups and even earlier mornings.

We might be able to sneak in one green beer, but I’m so tired from these last three years that even half of a beer puts me to sleep for the night.  

Though I’ve since retired my frosty beer mug, St. Patrick’s Day is definitely still a fun holiday.  

Having children seems to breathe new life into holidays we’ve gotten used to over the years, mostly due to their excitement coupled with the endless crafts, activities and recipes listed on Pinterest.

Now that my kids are old enough to do crafts with (well, maybe not the 2-year-old since he still eats PlayDoh) I thought a leprechaun trap would be fun way to get my kids into the St. Patrick’s Day spirit.

I need to preface this by saying I’m totally not a Pinterest mom.  If you look at the photo of the leprechaun trap we made, that will be apparent.

The inspiration for our trap came from a blog on the Kix Cereal website.

But honestly, your kids don’t care.  All they know is glitter glue is super fun to use and construction paper is a hoot to cut.  Seriously.  My three-year-old will entertain herself for a good hour with a pair of toddler scissors and construction paper.  Cheapest activity ever.

The great thing about leprechaun traps is you can make them out of items you already have around the house.  We used a cereal box, cotton balls, construction paper, glitter glue and regular glue.  For the “bait” we used Lucky Charms cereal and some pennies.

Side note: the Lucky Charms are also a great topping for cupcakes.  We made green cupackes, topped them with whipped cream and then the cereal, which made for a festive treat.

This was an awesome activity for a Sunday afternoon, especially since my whole family was battling a cold.  The instructions are below, but really, the possibilities are endless.

I think the best part was hearing my daughter mispronounce it and ask me if I “made daddy a contract.”

Enjoy!

Leprechaun Trap

Materials needed:

cereal box (or a cracker box will do)

red, orange, yellow, green and blue construction paper

scissors

cotton balls

gold glitter glue

white glue or a glue stick

a wooden dowel (or a pencil)

string

1. Take the cereal box and cut off the top flaps.  Cut the bottom of the box off, and then cover the outside of the box with green construction paper.
2. Remember the bottom of the box you just cut off?  Cover that in glue and then stick the cotton balls all over it so it looks like a big fluffy cloud.
3. Cut off a strip from each sheet of construction paper.  Glue them together.  Each one will be overlapping another, to make a rainbow.  
4. Glue your rainbow to the bottom of the cereal box, AKA your cloud.
5. We used the glitter glue on the rainbow, drawing circles with the gold glitter and then filling them in so they looked like coins.
6. Prop the cereal box, green side up, over the cloud with the wooden dowel, and tie a string to the dowel.
7. Put your bait under the box and wait for the leprechaun!