We're Irish on both sides of the family, one side has a bit more than the other but that's OK. Plus, we're catholic so Saint Patrick is a wonderful topic to discuss.
For Saint Patrick's day in our home we always eat corned beef and cabbage, which is a pretty traditional meal for the Irish especially on "Saint Paddy's Day". We usually leave out the seasonings that come with the brisket when you buy it as there's a few in there that we personally don't like and it takes to long to pick them out, besides we like the taste plain. I always add potatoes and carrots to our pot as it cooks, sometimes onions as well, and it makes for a wonderful one pot meal!
We usually talk about Leprechaun's and color a picture or two (which of course we did this year as usual). This year the campers each made rainbow leprechaun traps as well in the hopes of catching their very own leprechaun. There's a couple of four leaf clovers floating around for luck as well.
But as the children are a bit older this year and all of them are more interested in what each saint is about we've added a lot more to our homeschool schedule about Saint Patrick himself. We started on Sunday by making two pages of three leaf clovers. The one with several on the page also has an Irish blessing written above each one and the children all drew a picture that represented being held in God's hand at the bottom of the sheet.
The second page shows the Trinity using the three leaf clover and below that we wrote: Christ with me, Christ before me, Christ behind me, Christ in me. Which is an Irish prayer that I thought was perfect during Lent.
Monday (today) we plan on talking a lot about Saint Patrick himself, perhaps watching a few videos on YouTube, and the Cracker Jack's will have some Saint Patrick's Day copy work to do. I've a good unit study we could have done had my printer not run out of ink! You can find it, and others, here . I'll be doing a lot of reading and discussion about Saint Patrick from the unit and we'll be sure to print it off next year!
I'll leave you with this wee prayer/blessing as I go:
May Christ give to you at this time
and for always,
His peace in your soul,
His presence in your heart,
His power in your life.
Have a wonderful Saint Patrick's Day! Don't forget that on Wednesday (the 19th) it's Saint Joseph's Day.
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My wife and older two kids are off to perform at a Knights of Columbus dinner. My wife(flute) and DD(singing) are in an Irish band. My ODS does Irish Dance. I get to stay home with YDS. I haven't had corn beef in years. I might have to do that next week. My wife has a bit of Irish in her but you have to go back a fair way. I did know about the Shamrock and the Trinity. My DD has been making Crochet ones. I will have pictures for this weeks blog hops.
ReplyDeleteYay! I'm really looking forward to seeing the pictures! I hope you got some of the crocheted shamrocks as well it's one of my favorite hobbies. My family is more Scots than Irish but there's a wee bit back along the time of the potato famine. The corned beef was great by the way, my husband has requested that I make it again next month so that he doesn't have to wait a whole year again :)
DeleteI love St. Patrick's Day traditions. Thanks for sharing yours. Visiting from Catholic Blogger Blitz! Did you get your Trinity pages from Catholic Icing.
ReplyDeleteActually I didn't get the trinity pages from Catholic Icing, we sort of just made our own. The older two children are in catechism and came home with a wonderful list of Irish blessings and prayers and we put them with a shamrock each on one sheet. The trinity one I made one shamrock for (for each child) which they colored and placed the trinity on and then we wrote the prayer beneath it. :-) So glad you stopped by!!
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