Do you celebrate St. Patrick’s Day in your preschool classroom or homeschool? Keep reading for the luckiest preschool St. Patrick’s Day activities that are sure to make this March more festive & fun!
We are a participant in the amazon services llc associates program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to amazon.com and affiliated sites. This post contains affiliate links. Click HERE to read our full disclosure.
PRESCHOOL ST. PATRICK’S DAY ACTIVITIES
March is here, which means it’s time to break out all of the green & gold in your preschool classroom or homeschool. What better way to practice math & literacy skills than by teaching a St. Patrick’s Day unit filled with pots of gold, shamrocks, leprechauns, and rainbows?!
Keep reading for over 20 of the BEST St. Patrick’s Day activities for your preschool, pre-k, and kindergarten students. These ideas include math, literacy, fine motor, gross motor, sensory play, snacks, and more!
Oh, and there are a few freebies in this post, too!
>>>Grab all of these St. Patrick’s Day math & literacy printables HERE!<<<
PRESCHOOL ST. PATRICK’S DAY ACTIVITIES: LITERACY
Choosing books is one of my favorite things to do with each new unit. Check out our favorite St. Patrick’s Day books here! I’ve even included one I bought on our trip to Ireland a few years ago!
You’re definitely going to want to start your St. Patrick’s Day unit with these vocabulary cards! They are the perfect way to introduce your little learners to the vocabulary that goes along with this holiday. You can use these words in your writing center, as a Write the Room activity, or as a picture match.
If we want our preschoolers to be strong readers one day, they need to start with strong phonemic awareness skills first. One of the best ways we can do this is by helping our kids hear & identify the individual sounds within spoken words. This activity asks our preschoolers to focus on the /p/ sound. I’ve included two versions:
- Version 1: Students slide the slider, name at the picture they see, and determine if the /p/ sound is at the beginning or end of the word. Then they graph their results.
- Version 2: Students spin the spinner and come up with their own word that either starts or ends with /p/. Then they graph their results. (This version is much more difficult.)
Once our little ones have a strong understanding of letter sounds, we want them to practice blending those sounds together to read words. This activity has little ones build a CVC (consonant-vowel-consonant) word by spinning the spinner to choose the onset (the initial consonant) and the rime (the vowel and everything after). Have them use alphabet letters to build the word. Then they will touch the colored circles under the letters to blend the sounds. Bonus points if they can determine if the word they read is a real word or nonsense word!
Letter puzzles are always a hit with preschoolers, and these are perfect for St. Patrick’s Day! Students have fun finding the uppercase & lowercase letter matches and putting them together. These are also perfect to add to a writing tray filled with green sprinkles, green rice, or shaving cream!
Need a fresh new way for your students to practice beginning sounds? Add these FREE St. Patrick’s Day cards to your sensory bin! This activity will give little ones the chance match the rainbow letters to the pot of gold picture to practice beginning sounds. To read more about these cards and download your free copy, check out this post.
Here’s another freebie that’s perfect for St. Patrick’s Day! These FREE & EDITABLE cards can be used for so many different things…CVC words, high-frequency words, even your little one’s name if it’s 3 letters or less. You could also type in one letter per card and have your students use the cards to build words. It’s totally customizable!
All you do is type your words into the PDF and print. My students used magnetic letters to build the CVC words on these cards which was a great way to practice their blending and segmenting skills.
This activity (along with all of our freebies!) can be downloaded from the Free Activity Library. If you’re already a member of our email community, you can click HERE to head to the Free Activity Library, enter your password (it’s on your most current email from me), and download your copy!
If you’d like to join our email community & receive the password as my way of saying THANK YOU for joining, you can click HERE to subscribe. Once you enter your information, the password will be emailed to you within minutes.
PRESCHOOL ST. PATRICK’S DAY ACTIVITIES: MATH
I’m always looking for different ways to practice basic 2D shapes in preschool. I love these cards because, by cutting them in half, they become puzzle pieces! Little ones can put the pieces together, trace the word and the shape, and identify different characteristics about each shape.
Play dough is always a hit with my little learners, and this is a fun and different way to use it! Have your students roll a die and identify the number. (If they can do this without counting each individual dots, it’s called subitizing, and that’s what we want them to work towards.) Then have them recreate the corresponding emotion on the mat. This is also a great activity for building vocabulary & incorporating social-emotional learning.
Building number sense to 10 is a key component in preschool math skills. One of the best ways to do this is by using ten frames. I love these clip cards because your students can use it to practice subitizing and fine motor skills at the same time! They can also show the number on a blank ten frame to demonstrate one-to-one correspondence as well.
Liam the Leprechaun loves to count his pots of gold! How many pieces of gold can his green pot hold? It’s your students’ job to find out! Have them use gold pieces to solve each problem. This is a hands-on way to practice beginning addition and subtraction skills.
Here’s a fun, hands-on way to practice patterns & colors. Have your students string Froot Loops cereal onto a pipe cleaner. You could have them work on AB, ABB, AAB, or ABC patterns. Then put two marshmallows at the ends for clouds, and you have a colorful math snack! Yum!
PRESCHOOL ST. PATRICK’S DAY ACTIVITIES: SENSORY, SNACKS, & HANDS-ON IDEAS
If the weather is warming up where you live, then water play might be the perfect activity for St. Patrick’s Day! You can make Leprechaun Potions by adding green water to a big plastic bin, and then add in whatever St. Patrick’s Day items you have…gold coins & shamrocks, black pots (I also use these for Halloween activities), and shaving cream!
Dried green split peas are an easy an inexpensive sensory bin filler that are perfect for St. Patrick’s Day. Add some to your sensory bin along with gold coins & shamrocks, black pots, and anything other holiday decorations you have, and you have an easy but fun sensory experience!
Give me all the rainbow crafts in March! You can make rainbows out of paper plates and so many different materials, such as dot markers, tissue paper, and construction paper. Don’t forget to add cotton ball clouds at the ends!
Here’s another type of rainbow you can make with your students for St. Patrick’s Day…a Froot Loop Rainbow! Have your students sort the cereal by color, and then have them create their rainbows. For this version, we added mini marshmallows for the clouds.
And here’s a third type of rainbow you can make with your students…a play dough rainbow! This is another fun way to work on the colors of the rainbow. We like to pair this activity with this Jack Hartmann song from YouTube.
This is a fun science experiment for the month of March…a Candy Rainbow! All you do is line up candy in a circle on a plate, then pour warm water in the middle and watch the magic happen! We’ve tried this with Skittles (our favorite candy to use), M&Ms, and Jellybeans.
More St. Patrick’s Day STEM fun! This time, we made Fizzy Pots of Gold. This activity was a blast! We followed the directions from Littles Bins for Little Hands and they turned out GREAT! I especially love the liquid rainbow we created on the tray.
I love this colorful activity to work on different shades of colors. Head to your local paint store and grab some paint samples. Then cut up a little piece of each color and glue them to clothespins and have your students clip the matching colors.
If you’re looking for books about colors, check out this post!
The next time you order a package that comes with styrofoam, make sure you save it for this fun activity! Stick pipe cleaners into the styrofoam, then add cut up pieces of straws. You can make colorful rainbow patterns while working on fine motor skills.
Have you made homemade play dough before? We are big fans! I love the texture of homemade play dough so much more than store-bought play dough, plus you can add essential oils to make it smell amazing! We made this green play dough by following this recipe. Then we added green food coloring & glitter to make it festive!
Once your play dough is ready, you can pair it with St. Patrick’s Day cookie cutters, shamrocks & gold coins, and more! Leave this center open-ended and have your little ones use their imaginations!
Who doesn’t like Lucky Charms?! Lucky Charms cereal works as a perfect sensory bin filler for St. Patrick’s Day! My students loved this activity from Alleah Maree. They chose a bowl of Lucky Charms and matched it to the correct number on the mat.
My preschoolers loved using this activity from The Stay At Home Teacher. I taped different Lucky Charms pictures onto paper plates, and then I taped those plates to the wall. I asked my students to roll a cube, identify the picture, and throw a beanbag at the matching plate on the wall. This was a great gross motor activity!
Have you ever dyed chickpeas? It’s SO easy! We dyed some for Valentine’s Day that turned out great, so I decided to try it again for St. Patrick’s Day. This time, we dyed them gold and pretended they were pieces of leprechaun gold. We paired them with this math activity from AC from AZ. *Click here if you want step-by-step directions for how to dye them.
Did you play “Musical Chairs” growing up? Here’s a twist on that game that can be used for St. Patrick’s Day or any time of year! Lay out butcher paper on the table, and then play music while your little ones dance around the table. (I played Irish music since it was St. Patrick’s Day!)
When the music stops, your students will sit in the chair closest to them and write letters, numbers, or even their name. You could use alphabet cards or dice for this activity. (We used letter cubes from Target I got a few years ago). Then start the music again and repeat! Trust me, practicing letters this way is WAY more fun than a worksheet!
Another gross motor game you can play is “Hot Potato.” While music plays, have your students pass the potato around the circle. When the music stops, the person holding the potato has to answer a question. You could hold up a letter and ask them to tell you the name/sound of the letter. Or you could hold up a number, CVC word, math problem, or any skill you’re working on and have them give you the correct answer.
And last but not least, don’t forget to make these delicious Lucky Charms treats! These are from Sweet C Designs and taste AMAZING! It’s the perfect way to wrap up your St. Patrick’s Day theme!
THE LUCKIEST ST. PATRICK’ DAY ACTIVITIES FOR PRESCHOOL
I hope these ideas helped you fill-in your St. Patrick’s Day lesson plans for your preschool classroom or homeschool! All of the printables for this unit (that aren’t freebies!) can be found in my Lucky St. Patrick’s Day Mini Activity Pack.
Do you celebrate St. Patrick’s Day with your preschoolers? Do you have any fun activities that would be great for it? Comment below or find me on Instagram [@littleslovelearningblog] and let me know!
love these ideas? pin for later!
Happy Learning!
