This post written by Mama Blogger Kelly from the UK.
With us being a part Irish family I couldn’t turn down the opportunity for a little St Patrick’s Day fun. Now, usually according to tradition, the real way to celebrate Paddy’s day is to get absolutely steaming off a few pints of good ole Guiness. However, I didn’t think this was a good idea for the kids, no matter how much of a sensory experience that would have turned out to be ????. So instead we’ve opted for a more child friendly totally edible pot of gold dig.
I won’t lie, I fully overestimated my creativity skills with this one and attempted to make layered rainbow jelly to go alongside the cereal rainbow ????. However, 6 hours in and 3 layers looking a little more like brown sludge, I dumped that idea right in the bin and chucked all the rest of the jellies in together to set in one big pot ????.
The idea was to pop some gold chocolate coins within each layers for the kids to dig out, but they all sunk to the bottom ???? so I had to add more once it was fully set. Setting this one up did take a little time but man was it therapeutic. I started off by grabbing a box of rainbow Fruit Loop type cereal and separated each individual colour into food bags to be laid down. To be fair, it wasn’t quite as rainbow as I’d expected so I stuck some red and blue food colouring into 2 of the food bags for a bit of extra colour, after leaving these to dry overnight they did the trick.
I then laid these on our tuff tray in 2 rows of each colour and having a fit every time my cats came near and nudged them out of shape haha. The idea was to pop the jelly out at one side because as we all know, every rainbow holds a pot of gold at the end. However, my jelly didn’t quite hold shape so we ended up with more a blob of gold to find ????.
I finished off by popping a few more gold coins down for decoration and cutting out some shamrocks and leprechauns using green icing. The wonderful letters were contributed by our little miss 10yr old.
Despite my little fails along the way our kids 4, 3 and 2 all let out a little squeal when they saw this set up. For some reason we decided to do it just before dinner like a pair of loons ????♀️ but it just added to the magic for the kids as they thought it was dead special having desert before dinner!
The kids loved squishing this one through their fingers and toes (once they’d eaten as much as they could) to dig out the gold coins ???? trying to get handfuls before the next one did. I most definitely may have dived in myself and had a little squish- sooo satisfying.
Not only was it a fantastic sensory experience but it was a great opportunity to discuss their knowledge of textures and colours that were presented. They even called out the letters they recognized which was great. Obviously counting their coins at the end and sharing them out equally was great social and mathematical opportunities. It did descend into chaos after a little while, think all the sugar hit, and they ended up chucking the soggy cereal and squished up jelly at each other and all around my blooming living room!
Again, though it was such good fun hearing them giggle and squeal at the textures, I’ll definitely incorporate this one again.
