st. patrick's day by the bay

 
St. Patrick's Day is coming up.  Do you have anything planned for your family?  Red Tricycle just came out with a list of family-friendly St. Patty's Day events in and around San Francisco.  Check it out!  It looks like there's plenty of fun to be had this year.

If you prefer to stay home, I recommend a treasure hunt in the house or backyard.  Pretend a leprechaun lost his pot of gold and hide his "gold" around the house or yard.  You can use anything to symbolize gold...play money, little circles cut out of yellow construction paper, candy (if you dare!), or whatever else you can come up with.  Have your kids search the house to help the leprechaun find his gold!

Here's how to sneak some math into the game:  Once your children have found all of the gold, have them count it and tally up how many pieces of gold each child found.  You can also use the gold in addition and subtraction word problems-- for example, "If the leprechaun lost 100 pieces of gold and you found 20 pieces, how many pieces are still missing?"

If you'd like to incorporate map skills, have your kids draw a map of the house or yard.  Each time they find a piece of gold, have them mark on the map where they found it. 

Teachers: this can be done at school, too.  I used to hide gold on the playground for our St. Patrick's Day party and my class loved sifting through the wood chips to find all the little gold pieces!