Host a Healthy St. Patrick's Day - Action for Healthy Kids
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Host a Healthy St. Patrick’s Day

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Overview

Healthy DessertIs your school celebrating St. Patrick’s Day this year? Celebrate the occasion with healthy activities! Try our fun food art ideas and ways to live “green” by spending less time in front of a screen.

Over the Rainbow

Ingredients:

  • A handful of fresh raspberries
  • One clementine, peeled and segmented
  • One pineapple ring, sliced into small triangles
  • One kiwi, peeled and sliced
  • A handful of fresh blueberries
  • A handful of red grapes, sliced in half
  • One portion of a low-sugar cereal to serve as your pot of gold

How to prepare:

  1. Grab a plate and start arranging your fruit rainbow. You’ll start at the top of the plate, following the order of the colors of the rainbow: red, orange, yellow, green, blue and purple.
  2. Start at the top of the plate, using the raspberries first. Continue with the clementine segments, pineapple slices, kiwi slices, blueberries and red grapes.
  3. Place small bowl of cereal at the end of the rainbow for the “pot of gold.”
  4. Eat and enjoy!

Makes one healthy rainbow snack.

 

Kiwi Shamrock

Ingredients:

  • One kiwi

How to prepare: 

  1. Peel the kiwi. Cut one part of the kiwi into a rectangle. This will serve as the stem of the shamrock. With the remaining kiwi, cut it into four slices.
  2. Arrange the kiwi slices on the plate to form one large shamrock.
  3. Optional: using a handful of grapes, halve the grapes and create mini-shamrocks surround the larger kiwi shamrock.

Live Green and Skip the Screen!

  • Encourage students to be “green” and save energy by shutting off electronics. Work with students to limit their screen to the recommendation of less than two hours per day.
  • While skipping the screen, encourage students to:
    • Dance to Irish music
    • Have a scavenger hunt with Irish- or green-themed clues
    • Go on a nature walk with the class
    • Encourage students to try green vegetables such as broccoli, Brussels sprouts, peas, spinach, asparagus, cucumbers and green beans.
  • Find more ideas for skipping the screen here: Limit Screen Time.

 

Tips

Engage volunteers by asking parents to help make other green snacks to bring in, inviting a local chef to host a green foods taste test with a variety of foods that students may not know, or reaching out to a local dance company to ask an instructor to volunteer to come in and lead an Irish dance.