So with the simplicity of a single entry for all the Platypus and Dr. Seuss resources I figure why not continue the trend? Even if it is not overly helpful to the rest of the world it means I can come back next year and either avoid repeats or recover the treasures with ease. So here goes:

Books:

• Shannon and the World’s Tallest Leprechaun by Sean Callahan
• St. Patrick’s Day by Mari C. Schuh
• The St. Patrick’s Day Shillelagh by Janet Nolan (you can find a clear dfinition and examples of some Shillelaghs HERE and pronounciation HERE.)
• Lindsay the Luck Fairy from the Rainbow Magic series by Daisy Meadows
• A Fine St. Patrick’s Day by Susan Wojciechowski
• St. Patrick’s Day by Anne Rockwell
• St. Patrick’s Day by Gail Gibbons
• Patrick Patron Saint of Ireland by Tomie dePaola
• Fiona’s Luck by Teresa Bateman
• It’s St. Patrick’s Day, Dear Dragon by Margaret Hillert
• Sally Go Round the Stars by Sarah Webb and Claire Ranson (Favourite Rhymes from an Irish Childhood)
• Julie Andrews’ Treasury for all Seasons (Poems and Songs to Celebrate the Year) selected by Julie Andrews and Emma Walton Hamilton
• Saint Patrick and the Peddler by Margaret Hodges (we did not pick this book up until AFTER our unit was done, but it was an amazing story with beautiful pictures)

Worksheets

• A fun leprechaun and pot of gold dot to dot HERE.
• St. Patrick’s Day themed addition, where you have to choose the two numbers out of 4 that make the sum HERE.
• St. Patrick the person worksheet HERE.
• Christian St. Patrick’s Day worksheets and crafts HERE.
• St. Patrick’s Day word problems (math) HERE.
• Story pages HERE.
• Word search with fun facts HERE.
• Numbers 1-17 dot to dot HERE.
• Rainbow maze HERE.

Crafts

• Templates for pots and shamrocks HERE.
• St. Patrick’s Day Man craft HERE.
• Leprechaun paperdolls HERE.
• Leaping Leprechaun craft HERE.
• Fingerprint Pot ‘O Gold with printable template HERE.
• How to Draw a Pot of Gold HERE.
• Maybe not for the kids, but for the crochet whizz… a Leprechaun hat thanks to CrochetSpot HERE.
• Shamrock Trinity Craft with a crash course on making something look plaid HERE.
• Fuse beads/Perler beads patterns HERE.
• Handprint rainbow HERE.
• Make a leprechaun trap HERE. We used coloured instead of plain sticks… they were cheaper!!

General Printables

• St. Patrick’s Day Fun Facts HERE.
• Irish Dancer colouring page. Trinity cut her flag away to just save the dancer HERE.
• Irish flag HERE.
• Irish bookmarks HERE.
• Little book of Irish slang HERE.
• Map of Ireland HERE.
• Irish American founding fathers (Irish men who were involved in the signing of the constitution, information and word scramble) HERE.
• The Ghillie Girls Irish dancers. We needed something all the kids could get in on and with multiple dancers this was perfect HERE.
• Design an Irish Dancer. The picture is the top left one of the page list HERE. Trinity loved this one, she made herself into a dancer!
• Colour an Irish Harp HERE.
• Colour an Irish Princess HERE.
• Colour a picture all about Hurling a sport rather specific to Ireland HERE.
• Fun themed labels for gifts by A Cupcake for the Teacher HERE.
• Celtic Mandala HERE.

Of course we had to scour youTube for some videos to fit our theme! Here is a selection! Discover Ireland Long Version by Tourism Ireland…

Riverdance for some beautiful Irish dancing… AND a Facebook link HERE of a friend and her troupe as they warm up. Sadly the music playing is live and what they were practicing to was canned music we can’t hear but still… beautiful.

Our focus also fell on Irish instruments… the Bodhran…

The Uillean…

The tin whistle…

and the Celtic Harp…

We only watched the first in the series but there are THREE videos on Hurling to watch by Cokane1888 on youTube.

Today we watched some videos with Irish dancing. I definitely have to share them both. Trinity also coloured an Irish Dancer today. You can find her on Education.com right HERE. 

We finished assembling some simple games – the Currclick Irish themed matching game (seriously check out their site and search St. Patrick’s Day… this is the freebie, link on right side of my blog), and then another from Education.com – a math activity – Pots of Gold. Not overly difficult addition and subtraction but a good revision and a chance for the boys to teach their brother.

Filling the pots with gold

We did our “smelly shamrock” craft today… pretty simple – you need either to print out the shamrocks on green paper or do what we did and have a template (great practice with cutting shapes), some green jell-o (I used jell-o brand, I wonder if the no name brand would smell as good… white glue and paint brushes. You can find the instructions HERE. We will have to see how smelly they are tomorrow, but we have plenty of jell-o powder to make more. 

Applying the glue

We coloured some simple Celtic knots, Our favourite UK site has some great St. Patrick’s Day printables. You can find some HERE.

With Emanuel and Trinity's knots

It was library today so Karyn, myself and Trinity and Emanuel made the trip to the downtown branch. Karyn alerted me to the fact that there is a substantial teen rated manga section in the upper levels… so I now have some reading to do! I still want to PURCHASE the back Gin Tama volumes but for now I can catch up and enjoy them, temporarily. AND the first 3 of Mushi-shi… YAY. 

Craft time

Books!!

We have a couple crafts to get working on over the next few days… I just need to find the time to make one of them myself first. I am hoping that we can just keep on having bits of fun through out the next two weeks and still find progression occurring… I have a few more books from the library to read tomorrow and of course more videos to watch. And that WIP to come back to… I promise more pictures are to come! 

A moment of quiet play before Baby Sister of Doom attacked!

Sunday can mean many things, though rarely (for this family) a day of rest. Today was no exception. Echo and I bribed Ken with an extra hour of sleep so that we could remain home during Sunday School. Echo was in sore need of a nap by 9am and class starts at 9:30. Yours truly was feeling much the same way, so I dressed the other 4 and saw them off before crawling up under a blanket on the couch for my own snooze. A little beam of sunshine, a warm blanket and the silence that is a virtually empty house. In fact, it was so quiet I could hear music playing in the other side of the duplex!

Pretty in Pink

I was woken up 5 min before the family returned by people asking to shovel our walk (that’s ok Ken needs the exercise…). With Echo still firmly asleep and the kids changed out of their church clothes I returned to my snuggle on the couch while they played, coloured and generally kept busy. That is until lunch time… a light lunch, some sorting of winter gear and lining up the return of our borrowed van (thanks again Chris and Chris) and we were ready to head out to the pond and our next big excitement – a sledding and skating party! 

Our backyard right now

We have had a massive amount of snow come down the past two days… I think well over 20 cm and with no wind and the sun out it was pretty much a perfect day for the event. There is a little building there that had washroom and rentals and even a little snack shop so bathroom breaks were easy! We lucked out and were able to have a little bonfire right in front of the ice and off to the side from the sledding hill. 

The first go down the hill Zander and Gavin bonked heads but went on for more. Trinity and Emanuel did ONE run with Daddy down the big hill and Trinity was DONE… Emanuel went with a sled and made his OWN hill off to the side and had a blast! He can be so independent!

Heading up the hill

Spontaneous snow angel

Zander was the only one who tried skating, though Gavin showed interest and got distracted. We borrowed a pair of skates for a couple days so that he can go on a special outing on Tuesday with Ken to give it a go! He did rather good for a first try and had a blast doing it.

Skating

There was hot chocolate, hotdog and marshmallows as well as some bags of chips and things. Lots of people to help with the making of it and the kids ate their fill and then some! I got to sit and chat with one of Emanuel and Trinity’s teachers and Echo was passed around a little. She was less than fond of her snowsuit and wiggled one hand out to hold her binky so we had to wrap her in her blanket as well. She and Alaskan Sock Monkey just laid back and took it all in rather quietly.

Snacks

Echo and Alaskan Sock Monkey

We stayed much longer than we expected and enjoyed ourselves thoroughly, it was not until the drive home (poor van) that we realized how chilled everyone BUT Echo was! So it was home to get into pj’s or in Emanuel’s case a bath first THEN pj’s and then quiet playtime before a light supper and bed. Poor Ken ended the evening feeling WORSE than he started off so I had to make the trek to the convenience store for sauce for noodles (and no slurpee… me and exact change math were not happy and it was too cold to walk back with it tonight). 

Sitting by the fire

There is some prep work for different St. Patrick’s Day crafts still to be done. Tomorrow the plan is to make smelly Shamrocks, and have the little ones colour some rainbows. I have found instructions on how to make paper mache pots for gold (instructions to follow) and I am trying to figure out a way to incorporate Celtic knots. The boys each have a mini book to complete and some other worksheets and then there is the hunt for green clothing to be set aside for the celebration. Maybe I can find something special for Echo as well! And now it is time to get the blog post up and maybe see an earlier bedtime… maybe. 

BRIEFLY standing in the snow