10 St. Patrick's Day Activities for Preschoolers

Holidays are more fun when you have children.

If you don't have any, you probably think I'm full of beans, but it's true. Holidays are more fun when you have children.

St. Patrick's Day never meant much to me.

Now, it's a fabulous holiday and a great excuse to break out the food coloring.

10 St. Patrick's Day Activities for Preschoolers

1. Dress in all green.
2. Arrange with a friend to have Lucky the Leprechaun visit your home while you're out. My mom is our Lucky. He is going to come in, make a mess, and leave little goodies for Grace to find while we're out of the house.
   All week long.
   That's a lot of messes, but it will be worth it.
3. Make green drinks. Who needs green beer?
   Put a drop or two of food color into the glass before you pour all the drinks today. It will mix as you pour the glass, so the drink will be green.
   Stick to clear or white drinks (milk, water, apple juice, ginger ale) for the best effect.
4. Eat green cereal for breakfast. Put a few drops of green food color in the bowl before adding in the cereal. If they are old enough, let your kids add their own milk to the bowl. As soon as the milk begins to puddle, it will turn green. Magic!
5. Have green eggs for lunch. If you want to go easy on the food coloring, finely chop some spinach or fresh herbs and throw them into the scrambled eggs. If you want the eggs to be greener, put spinach in the blender, then blend in the eggs, then pour it out into the pan and cook.
   You could even make my omelet roll up green. If you did that, you could cook once and slice it for everyone instead of cooking several different batches of made-to-order eggs.
6. Make spinach smoothies for a snack (here's a recipe for green smoothies called Green Monsters). The bonus is that your kids will assume you used food color in their smoothies and won't question how they got to be green.
7. Have a rainbow scavenger hunt
8. Make green Jello. To make it even more festive, you could add cut up kiwi fruit, green grapes, green apples, honeydew, or lime wedges. Let the kids help with this if you can. Alternately, make rainbow jello, but be warned - rainbow jello takes a long time because it has a lot of steps.
9. Make Irish Potato Candy. This is a great time to talk about the potato famine and why it was so bad for Ireland. It's a good learning opportunity.
10. Take a green bath. Just like the drink and cereal above, put green food color into the bath tub before you turn the water on. For a bonus, add some bubbles, too.

How do you make St. Patrick's Day special for your kids?