This year, St. Patrick’s Day falls on Sunday, March 17. As the holiday approaches, sprinkle some extra luck into your family’s festivities! Here are 12 magical St. Patrick’s Day activities for you and your family to enjoy, from cooking traditional Irish treats to making simple St. Patrick’s Day crafts.
1. Construct a leprechaun trap
Looking to get into some shamrock shenanigans? Try this STEAM activity, and make a colorful leprechaun catcher together. Using common household items like popsicle sticks, glitter, and a sprinkle of imagination, you’ll be on your way to catching those elusive little tricksters.
Even with the perfect catcher, those little guys could still be clever enough to escape, but they might leave behind footsteps and gold coins for you to discover the next morning!
2. Bring a little leprechaun to life
Make a DIY a leprechaun to go with your catcher! Little ones will enjoy assembling and decorating this freestanding figurine using a toilet paper roll, construction paper, and pipe cleaners. By following these simple instructions, you can bring your mischievous friend to life.
3. Go to a St. Patrick’s Day parade
This year, many cities across the US will host St. Patrick’s Day parades that celebrate Irish culture with music, dancing, and colorful floats. In Chicago, they even dye the river green! Get kids excited by taking them to a parade—it’s especially easy since it falls on a Sunday!
If you can’t make it to a local parade, host a green dress-up parade at home. Gather the family, dress up in funky green attire from the back of your closet, and let everyone strut their stuff while playing Irish tunes!
4. Hunt for gold
Transform your backyard into a treasure trove with a thrilling gold hunt! Hide shiny chocolate coins or gold trinkets for them to discover.
They’ll have to use their deductive reasoning skills to decode the final clue and sound out the message. Invite a friend or two, and get the treasure hunt started!
5. Sew a magic coin pouch
Craft personalized pouches for collecting gold coins on your treasure hunt adventure. Plus, it has a hidden compartment for budding magicians to practice their tricks! This activity is designed for third, fourth, and fifth graders and has detailed images in the instructions to help them wow their classmates with magic.
6. Practice counting coins (Interactive Worksheet)
Count the coins in the pot at the end of this rainbow! In this Interactive Worksheet, second graders will add up the pennies, nickels, dimes, and quarters, then find the sum total. Practice essential money math skills in a fun and festive way. It can be completed online or printed out.
Watch the video walkthrough above to see how it works, and read our Interactive Worksheet blog for more information:
7. Make green slime
If there’s one thing kids love, it’s slime! This St. Patrick’s Day, have a gooey green slime-making session! Help your kids mix it up using glue, borax, and green food coloring. Click to get the instructions.
8. Cook potato pancakes
Share a taste of Ireland with your family! Homemade potato pancakes are surprisingly easy to make, and you can even invite your kids to help mix the batter and shape the pancakes. Spend some time cooking up this recipe together.
9. Read Irish poetry
Have a family reading night, and explore Ireland’s rich poetic tradition. If you have older kids in seventh or eighth grade, they can use this worksheet to read and analyze “The Song of Wandering Aengus.” This ballad is written by W.B. Yeats, the founder of the Irish Literary Theatre and winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature “for his always inspired poetry, which in a highly artistic form gives expression to the spirit of a whole nation.”
For more learning, you can introduce your kids to Yeats and other famous poets using this blog post:
10. Write a limerick of your own
After reading an Irish poem, get creative with words by encouraging your little ones to craft their very own limerick! Challenge each family member to come up with a funny or whimsical poem following limerick structure. It’s a playful way to celebrate the spirit of the holiday.
11. Add and subtract with shamrocks
Use St. Patrick’s Day as an opportunity to get some math practice in! These whimsical worksheets, created for first and second graders, use symbols like clovers and rainbows to teach addition and subtraction skills.
12. Bake soda bread
Embrace tasty Irish culinary traditions by baking a loaf of delicious soda bread as a family. Take turns completing the steps, mixing the dough and shaping the loaf before popping it in the oven. The warm, freshly baked bread will fill your home with a delightful aroma and get you into the spirit of St. Patrick’s Day.
Need more fun ideas? Check out these bonus St. Patrick’s Day activities:
- Play a pattern matching game
- Hunt for four-leaf clovers
- Make shamrock stamps
- Complete a shamrock maze
- Color a rainbow
- Trace and Color a Shamrock
- Play “Over the Rainbow”
For a full list of our 190+ St. Patrick’s Day worksheets, crafts, and activities, and to view our entire collection of 36,000+ resources for PreK-8th grade, visit the Education.com Learning Library.
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