Since the dawn of childhood my children have enjoyed a visit from our local leprechaun.  He seems to visit us each year on St Patty’s day and colours our milk, eggs, creamer...lemonaide even was attacked this year.  This year we decided to do a little more investigation into the Celts.  Who were these people who lived 2000 years ago?

BBC History “The Celts”

Celtic Fairy Tales

The Celtic Knot

Our day began with green oatmeal, which Cade did not appreciate...and, green eggs and ham.  Naturally, we have some leprechaun madness going on over here.  I always forget to lock my backdoor...which, makes it possible to access our kitchen.  The funny thing was, the eggs, don’t turn green unless they are scrambled!

Using the above websites, the kids learned about Celtic traditions.  The interesting thing about the Celts, the kids thought, was that they didn’t read or write...and, since they didn’t write...like in our house, there was no written history of their daily lives.  It wasn’t until the Romans invaded with their writing skills, that histories were recorded.  They lived during the Iron Age, which meant they had the ability to make metal works.  Naturally, as was prominent at that time, they made weaponry.  They also had lots of jewelry.  The arts of the Celtic people was very beautiful.  One feature, known as the Celtic knot, is a repeating pattern with no beginning or end.  There are many different designs, but the theme (no beginning or end) plays throughout each piece.  We used this theme to create a Celtic Rock garden today. 

Keeping in mind that most Celtic symbols have no beginning or end, the kids set out to make a design.  Audrey kept to the nature theme, and worked a tree where the branches and the roots became one.  Spencer worked on a traditional design incorporating circles and triangles, while Malena made a turtle pattern...and Cade, well, I suppose black is a continuous line...right?

Once the kids chose the rock, and design, they used washable markers to create the pattern.  If they didn’t like it, they just wiped it clean and recreated.  Once they got it down right, they used outdoor enamel paint to paint in the design. 

Once finished, we moved out to the garden while the paint dried.  Audrey has had many attempts at a fairy garden...but, somehow since this type of garden doesn’t need water, it seemed like a better idea!  We worked to lay out a good ‘Celtic’ pattern.  We also cleared the area to make it more leprechaun and fairy friendly. 

Circle patterns are very popular, and it just so happened our circle (left) is also a sacred hermit crab burial ground.  Above, another sacred turtle burial ground Malena adorned with her rock.

To the left you see our sacred shell tree.  Long ago, when we first moved here Audrey hung several shells on different trees in the first fairy garden.  Since then, this tree has grown so much!   Since the area of the Celts is also surrounded by sea, we thought they would also consider the sea to be a sacred place.  Therefore, we created the sacred circle around our shell tree.  To please the fairies, we created a wind chime tree (above) in hopes of luring fairies and leprechauns to our Celtic garden with the twinkling bells and song of chimes.