St. Patrick’s Day Centers and Activities

St. Patrick’s Day is just around the corner! I’m here to share with you my favorite, go-to St. Patrick’s Day themed activities and centers to get your students learning through PLAY!  Be sure to grab the Clover Ten Frame Cards FREEBIE later in this post. Grab your lesson planner so you can put these ideas right into your lesson plans.

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St. Patrick’s Day Activities and Centers

Dance with Streamers! Dance with green streamers (aka crate paper) for music and movement to get their bodies moving and grooving! It’s so simple but so much fun! Dance to slow and fast beats or shout out positional words like up or down behind you to sneak in math! Rainbow Letter Sort! Draw a big rainbow on a large piece of paper or on butcher paper. Place magnet letters at the table and let the sorting begin! Students need many hands-on opportunities to explore letters. Some letters look very similar, like the letters “b,” “p,” and “d.” The more experiences students have, the more they will notice how letters are similar and different, as well as learning the letter names and sounds. St. Patrick’s Day Writing and Card Center! The St. Patrick’s Day writing center is filled with GREEN goodies to inspire little writers! To set up this center, fill the black pocket chart with St. Patrick’s Day vocabulary cards. On the table, set up green writing paper, shamrocks to cut out, along with buckets filled with various writing tools. Make a mailbox for the leprechaun so students can write letters to leprechauns! Add friendly letter paper, stickers, envelopes, and pretend stamps for added fun. Gold Coin Letter Manipulatives! Make your own gold coin letter manipulatives by placing letter stickers on gold coins. I wrote an uppercase letter on one side and a lowercase letter on the opposite side. Students can put the gold coin letters in ABC order, build names, build sight words, or build vocabulary words like in the photo.
Letter Hide and Seek! The sneaky leprechaun hid shamrocks behind some of the letters! Can you find them? It’s a fun game using these to practice letter identification using these leprechaun letter cards. You could also place the cards in rainbow rice and tape the shamrocks to the back of the letter cards if you want to add a sensory component.  

Stamp Names! Students’ names are important and meaningful for little learners. My students LOVE stamping their friends’ names in green play dough using letter stamps. I wrote each student’s name on a foam shamrock that I purchased from Dollar Tree. St. Patrick’s Day Writing Tray! Writing trays awaken the senses! Students match the upper and lower case coin letters and write the letters in the writing tray.  This tray is filled with green sprinkles and St. Patrick’s Day sprinkles. This is a catch-all type tray I found a few years ago. You can also use kid-divided plates for writing trays. Pot of Gold Sight Words! For my students who are ready to practice sight words, they can build and write sight words on the tray and with the gold letter coins. If you want to add sensory but are not a fan of writing trays, I have an idea for you. Place the letter cards in a mini sensory bin! Students find the letters in the sensory bin, make the sight word, and rainbow write it on the worksheet. Rainbow Rhyme Puzzles! These puzzles will help make rhyming engaging and fun!  This is especially true for my friends who love puzzles! St. Patrick’s Day Letter and Sound Match!  Students can help this silly cat get dressed up for St. Patrick’s Day with these letter boots and beginning sound hats. If you want to make this game easier, only use the letter cards (cat and boots) or only use a portion of the alphabet (ex: match letter and sounds A-L). St. Patrick’s Day Play Dough Tray! My students LOVE play dough trays, and they are used by students almost every single day! The one pictured above is a St. Patrick’s Day theme. I filled it will gold coins, shamrock cookie cutters, green gems, green play dough, gold coins, and green spatulas. Add any green play dough tools you have, like a lemon squeezer, play dough scissors, or stamps. Rainbow Paper Plates Cutting Craft! Paint chip activities are always a hit with my students.  Just cut a paper plate in half and draw a rainbow on it.  Cut the paint strips so they are skinny in size. Students cut up the paint strips and glue the colors onto the plate. It is an engaging way to strengthen those little fine motor muscles and practice scissor skills.  It’s also the perfect opportunity to talk about light and dark colors! If you don’t have paint samples, just cut strips of colored paper Just be sure to grab extra red, orange, and yellow paint strips. Students will use lots of those colors to create their rainbows. Class Rainbow Mural! We also make a class paint chip rainbow! Now it does take a lot of paint chips so every time I go to Lowes, I always grab a handful of paint chip samples to build a collection for projects like this. If you don’t have paint chips, you can always cut strips of colored paper. Making collaborative group projects gives students an opportunity to practice sharing space, sharing supplies, taking turns, and problem-solving with peers. Isn’t their rainbow amazing? This was on the wall for the rest of the school year because students, staff, and teachers loved it so much. St. Patrick’s Day Sensory Table! The sensory table is filled with green, orange, and yellow straws.  It’s fun to add in beads, pipe cleaners, scissors, and sequins for added sparkle. Students can cut the straws or lace the beads and straws on the pipe cleaners.  You can usually find straws from the Dollar Tree and Walmart. Clover Collage Art! A simple fine motor craft for St. Patrick’s Day is a clover collage. Students crumble up green tissue paper and glue it to the paper clover.  It’s also fun to offer green glitter glue and green sequins to add to the clover too. You can never have enough sparkle! Ten Frame Shamrock Cards! Hi-Low (aka War) is the best game to play to help students develop an understanding of more and less.  Using ten frame cards allows students can visually see the amount to compare then students can count the shamrocks to see how many there are. When we play Hi-Low, both students say and clap, “1, 2, 3 flip” and then flip the card over. You can also print out two sets to create a memory or matching game.  

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St. Patrick’s Day Patterns! Making patterns anytime is fun! When you add gold coins, green gems, and St. Patrick’s Day themed pattern strips; it’s extra exciting! Students can extend the patterns and then create their own. Pot of Gold Count! This game has students counting coins (real objects), ten frames, dice, and tally marks, as well as recognizing numerals.  It’s so important for students to understand the various ways numbers can be represented. Shamrock Sort! Sorting with a St. Patrick’s Day twist!  Students sort clovers by pattern (pictured here) and by size.  Sorting can be hard, and some students need lots of practice recognizing similarities and differences. St. Patrick’s Day Blocks Center! Don’t forget about adding some St. Patrick’s Day, rainbow props, green props, gold cups, and STEM I Can Build Cards to the BLOCKS center!  I posted some fun St. Patrick’s Day STEM challenges like building a leprechaun hideout and building a horseshoe. Leprechaun Traps! If you want to challenge students to build leprechaun traps, try sneaking in positional words. Students build traps and move the leprechauns to all the different positions. Color Mixing Science Table! Need a science investigation to go with a St. Patrick’s Day theme? Try color mixing! Your students will love it and learn a ton! This is how I set up my science table last year when we did our color investigations: We made a color wheel and color chart using art supplies. We also read books about color mixing and explored paint mixing baggies, just like the book Mouse Paint. We made a color mixing chart to record our findings. On the table, I set up colored water, pipettes, and Petri dishes.  Students experimented by mixing the colors and making new colors.  Be sure to cover the table with plastic or laminated white paper like I did because the colored water may stain the table. Grab the St. Patrick’s Day Snack Idea! Grab all the green or clover tableware for a fun snack! You can have green grapes (make sure you cut them), honeydew, or kiwi as the fruit for a snack. Then make the milk green using some food coloring and have it with Lucky Charms cereal. The candy is on the plate because a student brought it for the class.

 

 

Want all the St. Patrick’s Day printables plus MORE featured in this post? Go grab my St. Patrick’s Day Math and Literacy Centers HERE. Just print, prep, and teach. Grab the Spring STEM I Can Build pack, which includes St. Patrick’s Day, Spring, Eater, and Earth Day themed STEM challenge cards HERE.  

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