St. Patrick’s Day Activity

As my son heads into his school age years I realize just how quickly the time has flown. We only have a few years left of the magical childhood years; excuse me while I go in the bathroom and cry. This is why I decided to do something special for St. Patrick’s day and thus came the St Patrick’s Day activity, a rainbow treasure hunt!

I was pretty proud of this St Patrick’s day activity. My son has been super into hunting treasure, sometimes he goes around finding random things and pretends they are from some make believe creature. I loooove the imagination years. It got me thinking he likes treasure hunts so much why not make it St. Patrick’s day themed complete with a story.

A Week before the St Patrick’s Day Activity

The story just sort of came to me and we had such fun putting it together I think it will be a tradition. Leading up to St. Patrick’s Day I started talking to my son about leprechauns. I told him how sometimes a leprechaun will come to visit on St. Patrick’s day. I also told him how we wear green so we don’t get pinched. He was excited to wear his green shirt and had it picked out for when the day came.

Preparing for the Rainbow Treasure Hunt

When my son was in bed I dug out one balloon in every color of the rainbow. Then I thought about where I wanted to hide the balloons and googled silhouette pictures that coordinated. I also typed out the words, even though he can’t read yet I thought it was good for site words and to become familiar. I printed them all and cut them out small enough to fit in the balloons but large enough to read. As well, I coordinated glitter colors to match the balloons. This was a super fun addition because when the balloons were popped the glitter sprayed out making it seem more magical. I rolled up the papers and stuffed them in the balloons with the glitter. Then we blew up the balloons for the St. Patrick’s Day activity. I only blew mine up to about the size of a large orange.

Preparing the Treasure at the End of the Rainbow

I went to Dollar Tree and picked up an Easter basket, green ribbon, gold ribbon, and rainbow gem stickers. I also found a rainbow table decoration and some colorful tissue paper. Then I went to Wal-Mart and purchased a photo spinning box as well as a rainbow banner, his favorite drinks, some skittles, and Ferrero Rochers because they are gold. I came home and spray painted the bucket black. While that dried I selected four photos to go in his spinning box and printed them off. I also stained the box using classic gray by BEHR. The idea of the pictures was to show him that friends and family are the greatest treasure of all.

When the bucket dried I hot glued the ribbon around the top of the bucket and added the rainbow stickers. I love how the pot of gold turned out for our St. Patrick’s day activity!

A Day before the St. Patrick’s Day Activity

Talking about a leprechaun got my son so excited and his imagination going. So the day before I told him that legend says if you put something green on your front porch during St. Patrick’s Day the leprechaun was more likely to visit. It was like saying “hi leprechaun, you’re welcome here”. This led to us painting white foam cups green and taping green streamers to the bottom to create green wind socks for the front porch. This was a fun St. Patrick’s Activity on its own. We also set a leprechaun trap. My son suggested using the Lucky Charms cereal since that’s the leprechaun’s favorite.

St. Patrick’s Day Activity

To distract our son so that we could set up the treasure hunt we ended up giving him a St. Patrick’s day themed bath (green color with gold coins to play with). We took turns occupying him and setting up. The red balloon was the starting point which we left by the back door to make it obvious. After my sons bath we walked out into the kitchen, passing the trap which led us to notice that trap was sprung! Right away my son wanted to search for clues which led him right to that red balloon.

The red balloon led to the orange balloon and so on until finally the violet balloon led to the pot of gold. This was located in the front yard so he didn’t see it when he was doing his rainbow treasure hunt in the back yard.

Family Fun

This was such a fun activity for St. Patrick’s day. My son got really into the rainbow treasure hunt and it was awesome to see him trying to figure out the clues. I loved bringing some extra magic into his childhood and hope it creates some really happy memories for him. I would definitely recommend it! If you don’t want to add the story into it, you could totally leave it out. The treasure hunt would still be equally as fun.

If you liked this post then please check out my other family fun posts: Family Movie Night – Slumber Party Edition, and Bike Wash – A Fun Summer Activity for Kids.