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Family Friendly Ideas for St. Patrick’s Day

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St. Patrick’s Day has gained a reputation of being a day to overindulge in green beer and wear a badge proclaiming “Kiss me, I’m Irish.” But at its heart, St. Patrick’s Day is a cultural celebration perfectly suited to family. No matter your national heritage, celebrating St. Patrick’s Day is an opportunity to teach your children a bit about the world while having fun. And that’s no Blarney!

St Patricks Day

Host a Party

Send out some rainbow-inspired invitations to a few of the kids’ closest friends. Have everyone help make green popcorn (put food coloring in the butter before tossing it over the popped corn) and watch a movie or play games. For favors, give the kids gold-covered chocolate coins, fun holiday bracelets and homemade shamrock pins.

St. Patrick’s Day Crafts

There are dozens of easy St. Patrick’s Day-themed craft ideas to do with the kids that won’t cost you much green but will provide plenty of fun, such as making shamrocks out of green construction paper or baking green cookies. Other examples include:

  • Shamrock Potato Prints
    Slice a potato in half and carve a shamrock shape into the pulpy side. Use the relief method of carving so the result is a shamrock stamp that’s approximately half an inch high. Press the stamp into green paint and decorate fabric, posters or sheets of brown paper to use as wrapping paper.
  • Leprechaun Hats
    Green top hats are an essential part of any St. Patrick’s Day outfit and they’re fun to make. Cut the center from a paper plate to create a hat rim and paint it green. Roll a sheet of green cardstock into a cylinder and glue to secure the shape. Attach the rim to the cylinder with glue. Add a buckle made from black paper and a glittered shamrock for the perfect holiday accessory.

Are You Feeling Lucky?

Outdoor Activities

Even with tons of fun crafts to do you probably don’t want to keep the kids indoors all day long. Here’s a list of outdoor activities to burn off some energy while keeping with the theme of the day:

  • Search for four-leaf clovers.
    If your lawn is too pristine for clovers, head to the nearest open field or park. The first person to find one wins a pot of gold—or maybe a handful of gold-covered chocolate coins.
  • Attend a St. Patrick’s Day parade.
    If there isn’t one in your neighborhood, help the kids put on their own parade and march down the street displaying their green top hats.
  • Play Kiss the Blarney Stone.
    It’s just like tag but a large rock or other structure gets selected as “base,” and players have to kiss it to be safe.
  • Do an Irish jig.
    Play some great Irish music and let everyone do their best version of a jig or Irish step dance.

No matter which activities you choose, end the day with a big meal of corned beef and cabbage and shamrock milkshakes for dessert. Just put a little green food coloring in a vanilla shake and everyone will be thrilled. There’s no reason St. Patrick’s Day can’t be a holiday the whole family enjoys together. Celebrate the rich heritage of the Irish culture with crafts, games, food and a lot of fun.

Are You Spending More Time With The Kids?

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The Easter holidays have traditionally been the time for families to get together. I think it is practically the same all over the world – at least in those parts where Easter is celebrated. Anyhow, we went to a relatively nearby beach resort for an extended weekend, and one thing that struck me was that there were quite a lot of families there. I suppose I shouldn’t have been that surprised as this resort is well known for being family-friendly. The many other times that I have visited this place, though, I didn’t see as many families with kids. Another thing that was good to see was how much time the parents and kids spent with each other. We would be sitting there enjoying the sun and sand, and we would see other parents and their children doing the same. Even those with teenagers were having a great time with each other! (Now those with teens would know that this phase is not the easiest when it comes to parenting!)

I couldn’t help but feel happy that in this day and age of family dysfunction, I was surrounded by people who valued time spent with the family; children and parents who genuinely seemed to enjoy being around each other.

Lest you think that this is a mere impression on my part, let me share with you an article published recently in a New York Times blog. Written by Tara Parker-Pope, it talks about how family time has grown – surprisingly. She writes that while modern parents continually moan over how they do not have enough time for the kids due to all the responsibility heaped on their shoulders, a recent study shows that the parents of today actually spend more time with the family as compared to parents of previous generations.

She quoted numbers to back up her statement:

The study, by two economists at the University of California, San Diego, analyzes a dozen surveys of how Americans say they use their time, taken at different periods from 1965 to 2007. It reports that the amount of child care time spent by parents at all income levels — and especially those with a college education — has risen “dramatically” since the mid-1990s. (The findings by the husband-and-wife economist team of Garey Ramey and Valerie A. Ramey appear in a discussion paper presented in March at a Brookings Institution conference in Washington.)

Before 1995, mothers spent an average of about 12 hours a week attending to the needs of their children. By 2007, that number had risen to 21.2 hours a week for college-educated women and 15.9 hours for those with less education.

The figures for 2007 are impressive, aren’t they? If you think about a week as being 40 hours (for those who work, that’s the normal time spent at the office), half of that is spent on childcare! That number can easily rise for stay at home moms (or dads, for that matter).

Now, the question is this: how much time do you spend on your children? I suppose we shouldn’t really be fixated on the numbers alone, but it’s a great start. The year isn’t halfway gone, maybe it’s time that you re-consider the amount of time that you allot for the family.