I have been waiting a year to share this game with you all!  Last St. Patrick’s Day, I thought it would be fun to have a Leprechaun visit the house, kind of like Santa and the Easter Bunny do.  This is an easy thing to set up and I assure you, the kids will love it.  Little Jo is already talking about the Leprechaun is coming back this St. Patrick’s Day!

First, you will need to gather one large plastic cauldron, six small black cauldrons, lots of candy with gold wrappers (like Reese’s or Nuggets), small rainbow-colored toys and rainbow ribbon.  The fun part for me was emptying all the gold wrapped candy onto the counter and sampling it before filling the large green cauldron.  This candy will be your final prize — the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow!

Next, take your small, rainbow-colored toys and divide them out by color.  You will put a couple of toys into each of the six small cauldrons. You should end up with one filled with red toys, one with orange, one with yellow, and so on through the colors of the rainbow. I even added a little colored tissue paper to really brighten up the cauldrons. Tie the red ribbon to one side of your red cauldron.  Place the first cauldron somewhere in your house, hidden from view, but with the ribbon poking out.  Tie the orange ribbon to the other side and run it to the next hiding spot where you will place the orange cauldron.

I tucked the yellow cauldron on the bookshelf.  It’s fun to run the ribbons around the room and watch your kid follow the ribbons to the next treasure.  Make sure you go in the correct rainbow order, so this is not only fun but a little bit educational, too!  (Although I did combine indigo and violet into one and just used purple.)  The final ribbon I used was rainbow ribbon and led to the pot of gold, of course!  Little Jo took the cauldron of candy to her preschool class to share.

This game is a new tradition in our household now.  It’s a lot of fun to run around the house following the ribbons.  And you can just keep everything and use it again the next year.  Well, everything except the prizes and candy, of course. Those would never last for a whole year!