St. Patrick's Day Activities

We did a variety of St. Patrick's Day activities today. 

 We made some green finger jello. The kids then made their own creations with some whipped cream. 

We also made rainbow sticks by using dowel rods, Fruit Loops, and marshmallows. 

We have done the Skittles challenge before, but it never disappoints! 

Arrange your Skittles on a plate and add warm water over top of the skittles. Watch the colors move until the meet. 

Rachel also created her own rainbows with a cup of water and the sun after watching the rainbow video from Mystery Science: https://mysteryscience.com/trending/mystery-5/light-color/209?r=55522192 

We also did some St. Patrick's Day painting/drawing and rainbow creations with Magna-Tiles. 

St. Patrick's Day Food

We made some St. Patrick's Day traditional food today. 

I started by putting a chopped onion, 3 quartered carrots, 4 halved red potatoes, and about 2 cups of vegetable stock in a crock pot. I added the corn beef, 2 tsp garlic salt, and the pickling spice kit to the crock pot. I set it on high and cooked for 6-7 hours. 

We then continued with potato soup (http://workingmomwonders.blogspot.com/2013/12/potato-soup.html) and Irish soda bread. 

Ingredients for the soda bread: 

4 cups flour

4 Tbsp sugar

1 tsp baking soda

1 Tbsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 cup softened butter

1 egg

1 cup buttermilk (use 1 cup of milk and 1 Tbsp vinegar mixed together) 

For the topping: 1/4 cup melted butter and 1/4 cup buttermilk

Mix the flour, sugar, baking soda, baking powder, and salt in a bowl. Add the butter, egg, and buttermilk. Stir. Pour on a floured surface and knead until the ingredients are all incorporated. 

Shape the dough into a circle and place on a greased pan or a baking stone. Cut an X in the top. Brush the bread with some of the buttermilk and butter mixture. 

Bake at 375 degrees for 45 minutes. (Every 15 minutes, spread more of the butter and buttermilk mixture on top of the bread while it's baking.) 

Pi Day Celebration

3/14 is National Pi Day. Here are some pictures of our annual Pi Day celebration:

The kids worked together to make their own mini pies. We used my apple pie filling recipe (http://workingmomwonders.blogspot.com/2013/10/dutch-apple-pie.html) to create the filling for the mini pans. 

The kids designed the tops of their pie. (Rachel wanted a cat face instead of a traditional Pi theme!)

Then we made homemade pizza and decorated it with the Pi theme.(http://workingmomwonders.blogspot.com/2013/02/valentines-day-meal.html) 

Mario Day Celebration

We have been celebrating Mario Day for a couple of years now. I am usually able to find a Mario gingerbread castle on clearance after Christmas, so that becomes a fun activity for us on Mario Day. I also made a new photo board this year as well. New to our celebration was some Mario-theme food and mystery question boxes. 

I also start my photo board with pencil and then outline in Sharpie. Then I paint it with acrylic paint. 

For the question boxes, I a cut the flaps off the top and covered the outside of each box with tissue paper. Then we filled them with candy and gum. 

I taped another piece of tissue paper over the candy and added a question mark. 

The kids held the boxes over their heads and jumped up to hit the tissue paper, which sent the candy flying out. 

We added our Mario figures to the gingerbread castle. (The figures came from our Advent Calendar this year.)