St. Patrick's Day fun

For St. Patrick's Day we have fun stuff planned.  I've got some Irish blood from both sides and the hubby has some too.  So we try to have a fun time to celebrate the Irish in our heritage.  Let's be honest, we'd celebrate it anyway even if we didn't have a drop of Irish blood in our veins.

We'll read some books

We'll make some fun food: 

• Green eggs and ham
• Green muffins
• Green frosted shamrock cinnamon rolls

I use this simple Sweet Bread -bread machine- recipe for the dough.  

1 cup evaporated milk

2 eggs

2 Tbsp butter

1/3 cup sugar

3/4 tsp. salt

3 1/2- 3 3/4 cup bread flour (I use regular without a problem)

3 tsp. yeast

Put in bread machine in order and set to the dough setting.  

When the dough is finished you are ready for the next step.  I basically use the recipe for the filling and glaze from  Paula Dean's recipe .  Follow the directions for rolling out the dough, spreading the filling, and then instead of rolling the dough from one side, roll it from both sides so that you have two rolls that comes together to meet in the middle.  When you cut off pieces for your cinnamon rolls, you can shape them into hearts.  I got my inspiration from CatholicIcing's Valentine Cinnamon rolls .  

I let mine rise for a really long time so they look a little less like hearts than they could if you only give them a couple hours instead of, say, 10 like I did.  Bake at 350 degrees for about 15-20 minutes (or until golden on top).  You can remove them and push three together to form shamrock.  Be sure to save so straight pieces for your shamrock stems.  Color the Paula Dean frosting with green food coloring and you are all done!

We'll also do our Fruit Loops Rainbow Craft

1. Gather supplies: glue, blue and green construction paper, marshmallows and Fruit Loops

2. Tear the green paper so it becomes a hilly landscape and glue onto the blue paper.

3. Add glue spots (older children can do their own gluing) and use the project to teach about the colors.  Start with red, then orange, then yellow, green, blue, purple.  Ask your child to pull the color from a pile of multi-colored Fruit Loops to teach color recognition.

 4. When you are done with the rainbow, add some glue spots for the clouds.  You kiddo can place marshmallows to look like the clouds at the ends of the rainbow.  A lovely picture to hang on your wall for St. Patrick's Day.

Last we'll discuss the Holy Trinity.  St. Patrick, the patron Saint of Ireland taught about the Trinity (Three Persons in One God) using the shamrock.  Another fun way to give kids more insight into this mystery is the Trinity Candles.  

1. Get three candles.  One for the Father, one for the Son, and one for the Holy Spirit.  You will need another person to help with this so as not to start a house fire.  Hold the candles apart and then join the flames together.  The flames are separate, yet when they joined together, they are ONE! (It's a good idea to put a paper plate underneath while you do this so you don't spill wax everywhere)

Father, Son, Holy Spirit

Three in ONE GOD

There are some other great resources that we plan to use from  Catholic Inspired

Happy St. Patrick's Day!