St. Patrick’s Day Treasure Hunt

Every since I did a scavenger hunt for Valentine’s Day, I have been wanting to do another one.  Evan LOVED it…I mean, really LOVED it!!  He’s been on this kick of going on an adventure, using maps and searching for treasure.  So I thought St. Patty’s Day would be PERFECT.  The problem is, the boys came down with a nasty bug over the weekend and I realized yesterday that I might be coming down with the same junk.  I was planning on doing the treasure hunt on St. Patty’s Day but decided to do it today instead, just in case I ended up feeling as bad as the boys did.  I didn’t want them to miss out because I wasn’t feeling well.  I like this Holiday…maybe because I’m part Irish and I enjoy learning about my heritage…or maybe it’s because of the recent unexpected loss of my dad (he’s where my Irish comes from) and my desire to keep him around in some way.  I don’t know, but I always try to learn a little bit more about the it each year.  I want the boys to learn about their heritage too.  I never knew much about mine growing up so it will be a learning experience for us all.  Yesterday I had the boys stick shapes on shamrocks (they didn’t know what it was for).  I decorated a couple too.

Decorating Shamrocks VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

I put together  a unit study about St. Patrick’s Day for us to work on this week but I’m afraid we haven’t been able to accomplish all that I’d hoped, due to that dreadful bug.  The treasure hunt is NOT something that I was willing to bypass though.

Here’s the map that I made:

I never said I was an artist .  I used a foam mat and some fabric paint along with some foam shamrocks and the same foam shapes we used to decorate the other foam shamrocks.  On the map I drew, or attempted to draw, items that would belong in specific areas of the house in each square to direct them to the appropriate room.  Then, I put a shamrock in that square with the shape to look for.  Each shamrock had the same shape and color (i.e. look for the shamrock with the red stars).  I can’t tell you how much Evan LOVED this!  Owen had fun too; next year he will really love it.  It was cute to see him get excited when Evan did.  At each location I placed a laminated card with a little tidbit of information about the holiday, Irish traditions and our heritage.  For example, my maiden name (which is Irish) means 'Don’t touch the cat without a glove.  I know, really noble huh?  Maybe that’s why I hate getting dirty .

Here are a couple more for you: 

There’s a legend that says that each leaf of the clover has a certain meaning associated with it- 1st=hope, 2nd=faith, 3rd=love and 4th=luck.

And one study claims that there are 10,000 3 leaf clovers for every 1 with 4 leaves.

I found some fantastic free printables at Love the Day.  I laminated them so I will have them for years to come.

So here are some pics from the hunt (before they did it):

		Hunt layout VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

Here are some pics during the hunt:

On the Hunt VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

After the hunt, they enjoyed their treasure:

And now I leave you with an Irish blessing:

May the road rise up to meet you,

may the wind be always at your back,

may the sun shine warm upon your face,

the rain fall soft upon your fields,

and until we meet again,

may God hold you in the palm of his hand.