St. Patricks Day

I found this really cute and simple craft on "No Time For Flash Cards" blog and I thought it would be perfect for Hannah.   As long as I can remember, I have in some way celebrated St. Patrick's Day by either wearing green, doing something in grade school or just saying "Happy St. Patrick's Day!".  However, other than knowing it is an Irish Holiday when everyone wears green, I really didn't know what it was that I was celebrating or recognizing.  So, I decided to do a little research so that I could talk about it with Hannah as we were doing our craft and make sure there wasn't anything I was telling her that was wrong, or that I didn't think we should celebrate.  Evidently St. Patrick was persecuted for his faith when trying to bring Christianity to Ireland, which at one time was known to worship many different gods.  St. Patrick stressed to the people of Ireland that there was only one God and that He was a triune God.  He used the shamrock to explain the trinity of God the Father, Jesus the Son and the Holy Spirit as being one unit with three different purposes.  I had no idea that that was where the Shamrock came into play with St. Patrick's Day, did you?  I really don't know anything else about St. Patrick's core beliefs.   I also found out that the original color of St. Patrick's Day was blue, but it was changed to green because of the Shamrock.  As far as the Leprechaun with the rainbow and pot of gold, no one seems to know where in the world that came from in relation to St. Patrick's Day.  One thing I found on wikipedia was that a Leprechaun was at one time considered an evil spirit in Ireland and that was the opposite of St. Patrick.  Somehow along the years, it became a symbol of the Irish Holiday as well, but that makes no sense to me.   I decided we would stick to just the shamrock for our St. Patrick's Day craft and I would talk to Hannah about the Trinity.

 All we needed was shaving cream, glue, green paint, a bowl, something to mix it all up, a piece of construction paper and some scissors.

 I drew the shamrock on a piece of construction paper and after Hannah mixed all the ingredients up, it was time to puffy paint the picture...

 Can't see the actual shamrock under there...no worries... this was fun time to just get messy!  After the paint dries (24 hrs later), you just cut it out.

We weren't quite done playing in the homemade puffy paint, so after I set the shamrock aside to dry, we started doing letters and shapes in the green cream.  Hannah LOVED this! Every time I made a shape or letter, she would just say "more, more".   I had to get a picture of the H for Hannah.  I was of course the one doing the letters and shapes, but Hannah was able to copy a circle which I thought was pretty good!

And here's the final project!