Growing up, my mom threw frequent parties for my friends and I, often for no reason at all. I love planning parties for my kids, and some holidays lend themselves to super soirees.
What easier holiday to celebrate with a themed kids party than St. Patrick’s Day?
Decor
I keep the decor to a minimum, letting the kids create artwork to hang as they create. Green balloons and streamers are simple to find, and a plastic green tablecloth makes cleaning after craft time a snap. If you do want to get all Pinteresty, check out this St. Patrick’s Day board.
Food
I’m assuming your kids are as picky as mine and won’t be impressed at being served corned beef, potatoes, soda bread and Guinness stew.
Instead, stick with green food. It’s easy to find – I served peas, broccoli, green peppers with ranch dressing coloured green and made pasta cooked in water dyed green. I also set out bowls of Lucky Charms for snacking. Perusing the supermarket I also found snap peas, kiwi, cucumbers, apples, avocados, pickles, ice cream and spinach tortillas, and found plenty of recipes for spinach coloured food online, like this Leprechaun muffin.
Had the adults stayed for the festivities, I would have served green tortilla chips and raw veggies with guacamole, wrapped jalapeño jelly and cream cheese mix in spinach tortillas, and this awesome St. Patrick’s Day salad.
Crafts (aka keeping them busy)
I always have printable colouring sheets on hand at parties in case a kid or two doesn’t want to participate in a game, or just needs a little quiet time. They can be a craft in itself too. Some of my favourite St. Patrick’s Day crafts are shamrock headbands, fruit loop rainbows with cotton ball clouds, handprint leprechauns and toilet paper leprechauns. The more you can prep the craft items in advance the better – I pour glue into small Dixie cups rather than handing out glue bottles, and ensure I have plenty of paintbrushes, scissors and other tools to minimize squabbling.
Activities
What kind of a party would it be without party games? We played St. Patrick’s Day Bingo and I set up a simple scavenger hunt with a pot of gold chocolate coins waiting at the end. I also printed a large leprechaun poster and the kids played pin the bow tie on the leprechaun. The kids favourite game of all was when I turned on House of Pain’s Jump Around and instructed them to jump when the song said jump – they were hysterical with laughter by the end of the song and insisted we play it a few more times. We also dipped cake pops into green tinted melting chocolate – an activity and snack rolled into one.
Above all, don’t kill yourself trying to out Pinterest your party. The kids certainly don’t care and the other moms will be grateful their kids had something fun to do for a few hours. If you’re having the parents stay, consider adding Irish Coffee or green beer to the menu!
