G6 has made a request for more theme weeks, and we kicked off the new run of them with Saint Patrick’s Day! Feels like we are picking up where we left off as early last year is when I originally started theme weeks, and Saint Patrick’s Day week was the first week of shelter-in-place due to COVID-19, when I was not going in to work.

On Monday, we started our rainbow twirlers. We traced a large plate to get our circle shapes, and then I gave them paint one color at a time in hopes that G3 would get more separated colors than mixing mud, which was partially successful but not completely. Of course, I do love her creation as it is, too!

We let them dry overnight, and then on Tuesday, we cut out the circles, made it into a spiral, and attached to a chopstick. B7 decided to keep his as a circle and was really enjoying seeing if it would make a good frisbee, which it surprisingly did to some degree!

We had a few minutes free later in the day on Monday, but not quite enough to finish up the rainbow twirlers. Instead, I gave them each three green pipe cleaners, and went through how to make a shamrock ring step by step (G3 could do a fair bit of it, but did need some assistance with the trickier steps.) This time, I decided not to tell them what we were making. The final version needs a tiny bit of rearranging to make it all sit the right way, and it was like a big reveal of a magic trick when everything finally lined up and they could see what it was. B7 thought it was the coolest thing!

On Tuesday I also gave the older kids this mix-up of letters as a riddle. G6 caught on after a couple minutes that the colors could be sorted to spell each of the colors in the rainbow and made quick work of sorting it all out!

On Wednesday - Saint Patrick’s Day itself - we did some green food tasting for snack. I had them close their eyes and put a bit of each food on a spoon for them, and they wrote down what they thought it was. G3 was feeling a little nervous about doing it “blind,” so I put hers in a bowl instead. The older two both did pretty well! The green bean was the stumper of the day though (probably because they usually have them stir-fried, not raw!)

On Thursday, G3 and I got to hang out all morning, just us! We went out for a scooter ride around the neighborhood to beat the rain, and as we were on our way back, she asked me when she was going to get another “camp day” like her flower day and snow day. Since I had a few more ideas mulling around for Saint Patrick’s, I said “why, today, of course, as soon as we get home!” and put my thinking cap on to make sure I could modify remaining activities to be catered right to her interests.

I started off by bringing out the colored letters again. I asked her to sort them by color, and then we sounded out the rainbow color words and unscrambled the letters.

Next, we used a heart to trace a shamrock onto paper, which she decorated free-form (this picture is from when I mistakenly thought she was done… I was wrong, it was just intermission!) I held the heart in place while she traced, and then we decided together which lines to trace with marker to give her a good outline.

Finally, we made her leprechaun-spotting telescope. I wasn’t sure how this one would go over given that St. Patrick’s Day was the day before and the “lore” surrounding it these days seems to be that leprechauns are out the night before to make mischief before they “go back to Ireland,” but she had LOADS of fun “spotting” leprechauns on the roof, in the flower garden, in the grass, and even in my hair! When G6 came home from kindergarten, she made her own leprechaun-spotting binoculars and joined in the fun. I had them decorate the outer covering as flat paper while I added some “Saint Patrick’s Day magic” to the ends of the tubes (cut out shamrock shapes). We let the glitter glue dry overnight and I assembled them Friday morning, but they had a day’s play with them without their decorations even applied.