St. Patrick’s Day with Kids – Creating Family Traditions

Celebrating St. Patrick’s Day with Kids is something we love to do to create family traditions.  We love celebrating holidays at our house! Since my oldest (who is now six) was born, I have tried to make every holiday a FUN family tradition.  From the Elf on the Shelf to Liam the leprechaun, I always try to make holidays FUN in our own little family tradition type of way. I try to make every holiday celebration unique because I know it’s what my kids will remember most when they grow up. And I hope that they’ve had so much FUN that one day they will want to continue these little traditions with their own children. 🙂

Now I know we are all busy parents, but it doesn’t have to take much to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day with kids and you can keep it pretty inexpensive! You’d be surprised at the littlest things that kids will appreciate most. It can be a balloon or a special piece of candy, some fancy decorations left over from a previous celebration,  a handwritten note, a SIMPLE craft; little surprises that will make any holiday personal to you and your little ones. Get creative!

So here’s how I’ve made St. Patrick’s Day with kids a FUN and unique family tradition for my kiddos! Hope it will inspire you to do the same the next time a holiday rolls around! You know, Easter IS right around the corner! I’m just saying… 🙂

Celebrating St. Patrick’s Day with Kids

Start with some inexpensive holiday supplies. I used some stuff I already had from other celebrations, like the green balloons, the stripped popcorn boxes and some left over coins and stickers from last years St. Patty’s Day. Then I purchased some items at my local 99cent store.  I picked up the foam shamrocks and glitter glue on sale at A.C. Moore.  In total I spent under $10.

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Now to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day with kids there is one special little item that I purchased a few years ago at Party City for a couple of dollars. This little green plastic leprechaun hat is a must! Or you could use a little black shoe, if you have one from when your kids were babies.  The leprechaun that visits your home will forget one of these items behind for the kiddies to find!

I got this FUN idea from a teacher friend years ago.  Together we purchased an inexpensive set of little black shoes at Payless.  She took one shoe, and I the other.  We then used it year after year as we told our students the story of the leprechaun that had visited our classroom the previous night and how he had misplaced his little shoe after a night of intense reading in our classroom library.  The kids would get so excited and couldn’t believe that a real leprechaun had visited our classroom.  Word of our classroom shenanigans would usually spread pretty quickly across lunch room tables. It was so much FUN!

Now I use this FUN idea with my own kiddies! Every year on the night before St. Patrick’s Day we have a little leprechaun friend who visits us.  His name is Liam and he will usually enter our home through the window that Mommy forgot to close. 😉 Now this leprechaun is a really FUN guy! A party animal at heart! He loves to sing and dance and parties ALL night long!  The kids usually wake up to find the mess he’s left behind, along with his little lost hat.  (In this case, I’m using the little hat because I really did misplace that little black shoe a few St. Pattys ago. lol) Liam leaves a note every year telling us about all the FUN he’s had and about how he’s lost his little hat while partying the night away.  He kindly asks that we leave it for him by the window because he will return to find it the following night.

When Liam returns the following night, he leaves gold coins behind as a token of gratitude for helping find his hat.  My Big Boy just loves this! He gets such a kick out of searching for that little hat, bright and early on St. Patrick’s Day morning!

Trust me! Your kids will love waking up to a holiday surprise like the one I’ve set up for St. Patty’s Day.

Some of the items you see on the table, like the black hat and glasses for example, are items that I purchased years ago and bring out every year.  No need to break the bank and buy tons of new stuff! If you buy a couple of items each year and save them you will build your own little holiday stash that can be re-used year after year.

You can also add a FUN arts and craft project to personalize any holiday and make it an even more memorable family tradition.  This year my Big Boy picked out these foam shamrocks at A.C.Moore and decided that he wanted to use them to decorate our home for St.Patty’s Day.  I bought some glitter glue and used some paint and brushes that we already had at home and helped him create a little project.  We can look back at this project years from now and remember all the FUN we had this year on St. Patty’s Day.  It will also serve as a reminder someday to this old mom that they were once my little babies (awwww, check out those cute little toes below).  I know we will all LOVE looking back at these years from now.

We started by decorating the foam pieces with glitter glue but it got a bit messy so we decided to use a paint brush to spread the glitter and create a glittery background for our hand prints.  I helped him paint his hand with paint (that we had left over from another project) and there you have it, a memorable St. Patty’s Day project! Once these cute clovers dried we hung them on the kids’ bedroom doors as St. Patty’s Day decor.

I also like to personalize our holidays with special outfits or accessories.  This year my mom bought the kids some adorable little things to wear.  Again, no need to break the bank here!  She got these at Walmart for under $5 each.  Remember, the kids will probably only wear these once and outgrow them so you don’t want to spend big$ on stuff that you can’t reuse next year.

So there you have it!  Our personalized St. Patty’s Day turned FUN family tradition.  Hope it will inspire you to transform your next holiday celebration into a FUN family tradition that your kiddies will remember for years to come!

I’m so excited after writing this post that I can hardly wait till Easter. Peeps and baskets here we come! 🙂

How do you make your holiday celebrations memorable?  I would love to hear your ideas! Go ahead, leave me a comment below.  Thanks for stopping by and hope to see you back hear real soon! (before Easter I hope!)