St. Patrick's Day 2015

I love me a holiday. I mean, I am all about them. Normally I decorate my door, dining room table and mantle and use fun paper plates and napkins for the duration of the holiday season. However, this year, my St. Patrick's Day stuff stayed in a box until Sunday. #fail

We've made up for it though, using my cutesy shamrock napkins for every meal since, and I was still able to teach one of my absolute favorite lessons of the Faith Formation year, St. Patrick's Day! This past Sunday the third installment of Miss Jessica's class learned all about the life and times of St. Patrick, while having some fun along the way.

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As with years past, we filled out a worksheet sharing a few facts about St. Patrick. New this year was a video clip I found on some Pinterest round up, I think. It's from "up North" so my kids giggled at the narrator's accent the entire time, but it was a nice, succinct video that introduced a little of St. Patrick's history.

We made spoon saints again this year, and I finally got a picture! Personal victory!

Love this St. Patrick made by sweet KTH

The kids did great, as per usual! I was able to get all the supplies for all 22 of my kids for about $25 using a coupon at Michael's. Just my luck the paper wasn't on sale this week... I got the 12X12 pieces of green and yellow paper, then using my paper trimmer cut them into four separate pieces to pass out for the vestments. Instead of glitter this year we used metallic puffy paint and that worked out really well. There was a ton less mess.

Since St. Patrick is known for using the shamrock in the Irish countryside to teach the Trinity, and the Trinity is a concept we work on all year, I incorporated it into the spoon saint project. Just as a shamrock has three leaves but is one plant, God is three persons in one. The kids really seemed to get it—I was so proud! We wrapped green pipecleaners around three fingers and twisted them into a shamrock shape. It's so simple!

All you do is loop the pipecleaner around your first three fingers, wiggle the fingers free and bend the circles into place. Some kids struggled with this, and I ended up doing a lot of them for them, but some kids got it quickly and were able to help their friends. I loved seeing the team work!  I used the same somewhat crappy word search as I did in the past because I just flat ran out of time to make my own. It's not terrible, it's just not exactly what I would like for the lesson. There's always next year.

Hope your St. Patrick's Day is filled with all the blessings of St. Patrick, and a little Irish luck.

Christ with me,
Christ before me,
Christ behind me,
Christ in me,
Christ beneath me,
Christ above me,
Christ on my right,
Christ on my left,
Christ when I lie down,
Christ when I sit down,
Christ when I arise,
Christ in the heart of every man who thinks of me,
Christ in the mouth of everyone who speaks of me,
Christ in every eye that sees me,
Christ in every ear that hears me.