Throw a St. Patrick’s Day leprechaun party

This St. Patrick’s Day, throw a party for your children and their friends. From colorful hair to festive desserts, these party tips will help you create a St. Patrick’s Day tradition your kids will look forward to all year.

When little kids celebrate St. Patrick’s Day, it’s all about the magic of leprechaun legends, luck and pots of gold. Throw a St. Patrick’s Day party for the little leprechauns in your life. Leprechauns love yummy treats and rainbows, where they’d find gold and treasure. Try these easy ideas for St. Patrick’s day kid parties.

Throw your St. Patrick’s Day party during a time of day when kids have already had a main meal. This way, you can focus on fun and desserts instead of wrangling kids for mealtime. Create playful place settings, such as these adorable leprechaun hats adorned with a four-leaf clover and each child’s name. Use green paper for the table cloth and stick to green plants for centerpieces. The colors will come later when you and your band of merry leprechauns create rainbows.

Serve leprechaun-themed foods such as cookies with green sprinkles and leprechaun punch made with lime sherbet and citrus soda. Angee from Dresses 'n Messes shares a great recipe for Leprechaun Pie, a simple recipe using a base of green pudding and a special candy treat inside. Make sure to offer a mix of sugary snacks and salty snacks such as pretzels. Keep food allergies in mind and be sure to ask the attendees’ parents about any dietary restrictions.

Once the kids have eaten, it’s time to transform them into festive leprechauns. Hair chalk is a safe alternative to spray-on dyes that smell harsh and need to be used outside. Get your hair straightening iron fired up and ready to go. Make sure all hair chalking is done under close adult supervision. You may need to remind parents that hair chalk is completely temporary and will wash out with shampoo. Offer kids rainbow streaks or use green chalk to create scary leprechaun hairstyles. Give the freshly-colored leprechauns unstructured time to run around after sweet snacks and hair chalking.

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Once the kids have had a chance to run around and work off some of that energy and sugar, settle down for rainbow craft time. Encourage kids to use creative methods to make rainbow-themed crafts. Here are a few ideas:

• Before the party, cut out strips and squares of colored paper from junk mailers and magazines. Purchase inexpensive wooden boxes for covering in decoupage glue and colored scraps of paper.
• Give kids square pieces of blue felt. Help them cut out clouds using white felt. Glue the clouds to the “sky” and then glue down multi-colored pipe cleaners to create rainbows. Use gold glitter for the gold at the end of the rainbow.
• Give kids rainbow-colored stickers and watercolor paints. Let them create their own art based on the themes of rainbows and luck.

Final two images: Maria Mora

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