I earn commissions from my affiliated links. Please see my disclosure policy for more details.
Are you ready for some St. Patrick’s Day fun? I’m Irish, so I am biased, BUT this holiday is fun, festive, and full of tradition. There are loads of learning to be had throughout March. We’ve had lots of fun celebrating St. Patrick’s Day.
These St. Patrick’s Day activities go beyond St. Patrick’s Day songs and books (although we have those lists, too) will keep your children engaged and having fun!
I love the holiday because it integrates so much learning. This holiday is near and dear to my heart, given my heritage. If you need a few rock-solid ideas to celebrate with kids this March, check out all the ideas below or click through the image above for every post I’ve ever written.
Fun St. Patrick’s Day Activities for Preschool
Spooning Green Lentils
Adapt the classic Montessori Practical Life spooning activity to St. Pats Day! Remember to go left to right when demonstrating your lesson.
This activity is simple. Take delicate green lentils, two identical bowls, and a spoon for spooning. Not sure how to give the lesson?
Check out the Montessori spooning lesson here.
Shamrock Lacing
Bring a classic Montessori Practical Life lesson to the holiday with this fun activity. You only need a medium-sized paper shamrock (you can print, laminate, and cut your own OR purchase from the craft store) and a paper hole punch. This easy-to-prep shamrock lacing activity will keep your preschooler happy and engaged!
You may create the punches along the edge of the shamrock or give the child an opportunity to strengthen fine motor skills. Once you have the holes, your child can practice his fine motor skills with lacing.
This shamrock worked well because small shamrocks outlined the edge perfectly for punching. This shamrock lacing activity is easy, fun, and festive for preschoolers. Lacing is an excellent exercise for fine motor skills and practical life skills.
Pot of Gold
This gift is simple: a mason jar, two pipe cleaners for the handle, glue, a shamrock to decorate the jar, confetti and gold coins to fill the jar, and a small gift buried in the mason jar. Take the activity a step further for old children, add coins to the jar and ask them to estimate the number of coins.
Our son has been enjoying a book called Jack & the Leprechaun, an adorable story about a mouse and his cousin celebrating St. Patricks’s Day. They spend the day with family, cook a feast, sing Danny Boy, collect shamrocks, and, perhaps most importantly, chase Liam the Leprechaun.
So, this treasure will appropriately be from “Liam the Leprechaun.”
Melted Crayon Irish Flag
We glued the crayons in the proper order on a piece of white cardstock. Then we used a hair dryer to heat the crayons and enjoyed watching the crayons melt and drip down the paper. Use a green craft stick as the pole.
Irish Flag Using Shapes
We couldn’t get enough of making the Irish flag!
Use green, white, and orange construction paper, glue, and scissors.
I prepped the shapes, but you could easily make this activity into a scissor-cutting exercise by drawing lines and asking the child to cut along the lines to make the shapes.
The flag is 1:2 proportionally on the paper, so I weaved in an excellent little intro math lesson.
I introduced the flag with an actual mini Irish flag. We talked about the parts of the flag, the colors of the flags, and Ireland, as a European country and as an island landform.
I explained the art project. Then I laid out the flag as a control next to the bowl of colored shapes, the blank map, and glue.
Shamrock Shaker
In my experience, kids love any shaker, and this shamrock shaker is no exception.
Materials
- Two heavy-duty Chinet paper plates
- Glue
- A Plastic Bag
- Green Paint and a brush
- A variety of shaker fillers, including plastic gold coins, small jingle bells, large sparkly and small green pom poms, green confetti, and lovely green shamrocks
- X-Acto Knife
- Mod Podge
Shamrock Shaker Approach
- Draw a shamrock on one plate
- Use an X-Acto knife to cut through most of the paper plate
- Paint the plates with your green paint (you can go crazy here with glitter, stickers, etc. we kept it simple.)
- Let the plates dry
- Once dry, turn the plate with the shamrock over so the inside is facing up
- Fill your plastic bag with the St. Patrick’s Day goodies
- Tape the plastic bag down taut over the shamrock cut out
- At this point, I turned the plate over and popped out the shamrock cut out
- Place the plate together and glue
- Let dry
- I covered the plate with Mod Podge to add something to the shaker.
- Let your little ones go nuts. Both my 1-year-old and my 2.5-year-old loved the shaker. They explored the sounds by making music and examined touch by feeling around the bag.
Simple St. Patrick’s Day ideas include reading books with your child. These St. Patrick’s Day books are my favorite.
St. Patrick’s Day Children’s Books
Jack and the Leprechaun by Ivan Robertson (Age 5+)
St. Patrick’s Day by Anne Rockwell (Age 5+)
St. Patrick’s Day in the Morning by Eve Bunting (Age 5+)
The Last Snake in Ireland by Sheila MacGill-Callahan (Age 4+)
The Night Before St. Patrick’s Day by Natasha Wing (Age 5+)
That’s What Leprechauns Do by Eve Bunting (Age 4+)
Pete the Cat: The Great Leprechaun Chase by James Dean (Age 4+)
How to Catch a Leprechaun by Adam Wallace (Age 4+)
The Luckiest St. Patrick’s Day Ever by Teddy Slater (Age 4+)
St. Patrick’s Day Touch and Feel by Roger Priddy (Age 1+)
The Story of St. Patrick’s Day by Patricia A. Pingry (Age 2+)
Look What Came from Ireland by Miles Harvey (Age 4+)
Green Shamrocks by Eve Bunting (Age 5+)
There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Clover by Lucille Colandro (Age 3+)
St. Patrick’s Day Supply List
- Foam, adhesive back shamrocks
- Green pom poms of all sorts of shapes, sizes, and textures for math and sorting activities and a sensory bin
- Shamrock cookie cutters for play dough and cookies
- Shamrock silicone molds for melting crayons
- Gold coins for sensory bins and counting activities
- Green and Gold Confetti for sensory bins
- Lime Jello for shamrock molds
- Yellow & Blue food coloring or paint for color mixing
- Leprechaun hats for scooping and sorting
- Green Beads for sensory bins and pretend play necklaces
- Green peppers for shamrock printing
- Paper plates for shamrock cutouts
- Felt for shamrock pattern matching games
- Contact paper for shamrock designs
St. Patrick’s Day Matching Activity
Matching and sorting are great exercises for preschoolers helping to develop basic math and logic skills. All you need for this activity is green cardstock, scissors or a paper cutter, a laminator if you’d like, and St. Patrick’s Day-themed stickers. Create matching cards and then prepare by laminating and cutting.
St. Patrick’s Day Sensory Bin
Shamrocks, gold coins, large shimmery green pom poms, small fuzzy green pom poms. Add in some shiny green confetti, Leprechaun hats, and glittery shamrocks.
I added some green and white leis and green and gold beaded necklaces. Plus, tongs and a few big cups to scoop.
Making Green Color Activity
What better occasion to play with colors than on St. Patrick’s Day, celebrated worldwide and not just in Ireland? I am Irish, so the holiday ties into many aspects of family life and learning. This post includes a fun and easy-to-prep St. Patrick’s Day Colors Activity for kids.
There are a few legends about the official color of the holiday, one being that the official color was once blue. Green makes sense for a lot of reasons. For example, it is the color of the shamrock and represents the lush landscape of the “emerald isle,” a name for which Ireland is known.
So, today’s activity is quite simple: Making the color green. In this activity, we work on sensory (colors), basic concepts (colors), practical life (pouring), and fine motor skills (using a syringe).
Start with a tray and three jars. Two jars were filled partway with water, and a third jar was either empty or with a bit of water.
Grab yellow and blue food coloring or paint to add color to the jars with water. My 2.5-year-old helped me color the water in these jars.
Then I showed him the syringe and how to use it. Syringes are a tricky fine motor skill to grasp at this young age. Begin by having your child take a little water from the blue-colored water. Then a little water from the yellow jar.
Want more? Check out these ideas for March Montessori Shelves and other March activities for Preschoolers.
Related Reads
Marnie