St. Patrick’s Day Treasure Hunt

My kids love treasure hunts, and we all enjoy the annual tradition of leprechaun mischief that goes with it at my house!

As soon as both kids are awake, I hand them their first clue. Here are some printable tags from which to choose:

Or, you can click on the images below to open a PDF file of the “St. Patrick loves Jesus” clues numbered 1-7 (along with some blanks):

I make sure that the kids run all over the house before they reach their treasure. Along the way, I put little leprechaun feet and gold coins. We pretend that “Lun the Leprechaun” is the one who hid the treasure.

For footprints, I just cut two (one left foot, one right) from this footprint document (this will open a PDF) and traced them onto the back side of glittery green foam paper before cutting them out. I like to reuse the footprints each year to save time; you could also print them on green paper and laminate them. As another idea for the footprints, the Differentiated Kindergarten shows a creative way to use your hand as a “stamp” to make realistic-looking footprints with paint.

Our leprechaun does all kinds of mischief in our house (like forgetting to flush the toilet). I got this and other cute mischief ideas from Differentiated Kindergarten.

For the treasure, I filled paper mache treasure boxes (from a craft store) with anything green that I could find at the Dollar Tree or $1 aisle at Target. The box pictured below has green silly string, green plastic harmonicas, green Nerd rope, green gummy Lifesavers, a green bag of Jelly Bellys, and green gum. You can spray paint the boxes gold or even decoupage them with whatever paper you like. I intended to spray paint mine but somehow misplaced the paint. Oh well, maybe next year they will be gold!

I hope that these ideas inspire you to create a fun tradition with your family!

For more ideas on treasure hunts for St. Patrick’s Day, see The Crafting Chicks and Love Grows Wild.

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