St. Patrick's Day Fun

Kids LOVE make believe. And while my children know the truth about Santa, the Easter bunny and even Leprechauns, they enjoy pretending and making up fun stories and adventures with fairy tale creatures. For Christmas and Easter we keep the focus on Christ and what He did for us. This is something as a family we have made as a greater priority. So while we do crafts and fun stuff for those holidays, there is less of Santa crafts and more of Jesus in a manger and less of making Easter eggs and more of making an empty tomb snack or craft.

Recently, there has become popularity among other holidays, such as St. Patrick's Day, to spur on a child's imagination with creative make believe. So this year for the first time, my children and I are delving into the realm of make believe play with this holiday and are planning to "catch a Leprechaun."

Using an old shoebox, we painted it green with acrylic paint then decorated it in patterns with foam stickers.

My eldest son even created a four leaf clover by combining four hearts together. We made it as colorful as possible since we discovered that Leprechauns LOVE rainbows and all the colors of the rainbow. They also are attracted to shiny things such as glitter and gold. So we also decorated the box with a bit of glitter glue in gold, red, and green.

We used the lid of the box as the base and the bottom of the box as the top that falls and traps the Leprechaun. Then we put a little container filled with toy coins as the bait to lure the leprechaun into the trap. On the eve of St. Patrick's Day we will strategically place the trap somewhere in the house and leave it out overnight. Then in the morning, we shall come and see if we have caught one. Leprechauns, we are told, are quite clever, so we shall see what happens.

Do you have any fun St. Patrick's Day traditions or have you done anything creative like this before? Please share some of your ideas! I would love to hear about them. I'm not sure if this is something that can be an every year tradition as it may get old, but perhaps if we found out other creative ways to "trap a leprechaun" my children may enjoy this sort of fun for a few more years.