If there’s one thing my five-year-old daughter Samantha loves it’s Irish Dancing — which means St. Patrick’s Day is a huge deal in our house. We’ve basically been doing green crafts since February 15. Parents – grab a green beer for you, mix up some green milk for the kiddos, turn on this song (it’s one of me and Sam’s favs) and let’s get crafty!
For additional St. Patrick’s Day ideas to celebrate at home, check out this post from last year: Grab Your Leprechauns, It’s St. Paddy’s Day Crafting Time!
We love to paint with things other than paint brushes! In the summer we paint outside with leaves, flowers, plants… we’ve painted with vegetables before, rocks,- you name it, we’ve painted with it. Sam made this cute leprechaun using a fork for his beard. She did use a regular paintbrush for his face.
This gets messy — but is also fun! (Use a plastic table cloth to make clean up easy!)
Directions:
Fill a bowl or jar with water – almost to the top
Spray shaving cream to the top as the “clouds”
Mix food coloring in individual bowls with water
Using droppers or straws drop the food coloring mixture through the clouds and watch it “rain”
Unfortunately there was no pot of gold for me at the end of this rainbow – just a big mess to clean up (but also lots of fun!!)
The (Shaving Cream) Hills of Ireland
After we made the shaving cream rainbow rain showers, all Sam wanted to do was play in the “shaving cream clouds” when we were done. The problem was the “clouds” were FULL of food coloring and I knew one hand in there would result in permanently-stained hands (Even I have to draw the line somewhere!!) So I made her a deal- no food coloring shaving cream but rather I’d make her a separate shaving cream batch for playing. Introducing my “Hills of Ireland” as I named it. A ton of mounds of shaving cream, a ton of green and gold glitter, some plastic gold coins and St. P scatter I found at the dollar store and voila – shaving cream fun with no permanently-stained hands!!
Ok, so if you want to do this craft my recommendation is to do it FAST. I had no idea how fast paint dries on kids hands. Paint the kids hand from palm up, FAST, then press down on a piece of paper or canvas. We had to do it a few times because by the time I’d get to the blue pinky, her red thumb was completely dry. Super cute and easy- but trust me, go fast!
I cut the shape of the cauldron and the girls added Mod Podge and glitter and then we cut our gold coins out of glitter paper I had on hand.
Super easy and super fun (and smells good if you get good smelling shaving cream!) Mix equal parts shaving cream and school glue. Mix well and add a few drops of food coloring. I printed off a few shamrock printouts – or fun to just freestyle paint!
Shamrock Pancakes
We also whipped up these cute green shamrock pancakes by using a heart-shape cookie cutter. Yummo!
We made these Fingerprint shamrocks on teensy canvases I found at Michael’s. I added a magnet to the backside of it to make a little fridge magnet.
For now, I’m off to create our next messy activity, take Sam to Irish Dance (have a kiddo that’s interested? Her studio is offering awesome ‘Try It Out’ summer camps this year!) and FINALLY have that green beer. Actually, I don’t even care what color it is at this point! Find Sam and I over at @BusyInGroveCity on Instagram where we’re always making messes and crafting our way through the year! Happy St. Patrick’s Day!