St Patrick’s Day

Activities & Crafts

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St Patrick Shamrock Buddies	Green Foods
Shamrock Search	Cereal Rainbows
Searching for Four Leaf's	Leprechaun Visitor
St Patrick Green Collage

History of St Patrick’s Day

St. Patrick is a well known figure, but for all his celebrity, his life is somewhat of a mystery. It is known that St. Patrick was in Ireland where he spent time in captivity. During this time, he worked as a shepherd, outdoors and away from people. Lonely and afraid, he turned to his religion for comfort, becoming a devoted Christian. After more than six years as a prisoner, he escaped. According to his writing, a voice, which he believed to be God's, told him it was time to leave Ireland. After escaping to Britain, he reported that he experienced a second revelation, an angel in a dream told him to return to Ireland as a missionary. Soon after, St Patrick began religious training that lasted more than fifteen years. After He became a priest, he was sent to Ireland to minister to Christians already living in Ireland and to convert the Irish. Familiar with the Irish, St Patrick chose to include traditional rituals into his lessons of Christianity as to not do away with native Irish beliefs. For instance, he superimposed a sun, a powerful Irish symbol, onto the Christian cross to create what is now called a Celtic cross, so that admiration of the symbol would seem more natural to the Irish.

St Patrick's Day is celebrated on March 17, the anniversary of his death in the fifth century. The Irish have observed this day as a religious holiday for thousands of years. The first St Patrick's Day parade took place not in Ireland, but in the United States. Irish soldiers serving in the English military marched through New York City on March 17, 1762. Along with their music, the parade helped the soldiers to reconnect with their Irish roots. Over the next thirty-five years, Irish patriotism among American immigrants flourished, prompting the rise of so-called "Irish Aid" societies, like the Friendly Sons of Saint Patrick and the Hibernian Society. Each group would hold annual parades featuring bagpipes and drums.

When the Great Potato Famine hit Ireland in 1845, close to a million poor, uneducated, Catholic Irish began to pour into America. Hated for their religious beliefs and funny accents, the immigrants had trouble finding even menial jobs. When Irish Americans in the country's cities took to the streets on St. Patrick's Day to celebrate their heritage, newspapers portrayed them in cartoons as drunk, violent monkeys. However, the Irish soon began to realize that their great numbers endowed them with a political power. They started to organize, and their voting block, known as the "green machine," became an important swing vote for political hopefuls. Suddenly, annual St. Patrick's Day parades became a show of strength for Irish Americans, as well as a must-attend event for a slew of political candidates. In 1948, President Truman attended New York City's St. Patrick's Day parade, a proud moment for the many Irish whose ancestors had to fight stereotypes and racial prejudice to find acceptance in America.

Today, St Patrick's Day is celebrated by people of all backgrounds in the United States, Canada, and Australia

St Patrick Shamrock Buddies
Age: 4 and Up
Mess: Medium
Material: Green construction paper, scrap materials (yarn, buttons, glitter etc.), scissors, glue or tape and crayons/markers
Instructions: Trace a pattern of a shamrock onto construction paper. Let your children cut it out. Have the child create a face for the shamrock buddy (add hair too!). Help your little one with arms and legs by cutting green construction paper into strips (1 1/2" x 11 1/2") and then fan-fold the strips to create silly arms. Glue or tape the arms and legs to the shamrock and let them dry. Once dry your children can hang up their shamrock buddy to help celebrate the occasion.

Green Foods
Age: 3 and Up
Mess: Medium
Material: Green Food Coloring
Instructions: Mix in a small amount of green food coloring with a bunch of different foods. Some examples are milk, vanilla ice cream, pancakes or the classic – Scrambled Eggs! Let your child help in the mixing of the food coloring into the foods.

Shamrock Search
Age: 3 and Up
Mess: Low
Material: Paper and scissors
Instructions: Cut out many shamrock shapes and hide them around the room. Have the children search for them like an Easter Egg hunt.

Cereal Rainbows
Age: 3 and Up
Mess: Medium
Material: Fruit Loops cereal, paper, pencil and glue
Instructions: For younger children, you should draw a rainbow shape on to the paper then have the child glue the fruit loops inside the shape. Older children can make their own rainbow shape, or trace it.

Searching for Four Leaf's
Age: 3 and Up
Mess: Low
Material: None
Instructions: Depending on where you live, go outside with your child and search for a real four leaf clover. Examine with magnifying glass if you have one.

Leprechaun Visitor
Age: 3 and Up
Mess: Medium
Material: Green hat, green paper, tape, glitter, scissors and treats
Instructions: This is an old favorite from when I was a child. Pretend a leprechaun has visited a room in your house. Place a green hat on the floor and tape some small green footprint shapes all around the room. Sprinkle a small amount of glitter on the floor and some small round coins cut from yellow paper. Hide some special treats in the room and tell them that leprechauns often leave treats so try and find them.

St Patrick Green Collage
Age: 4 and Up
Mess: High
Material: Old catalogs, scissors, paper and glue
Instructions: Have your child go through and cut out things that are green and glue them onto the paper to make a green collage.

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