St. Patrick's Day Lesson Ideas
St. Patrick's day is a great holiday that can help motivate and make learning activities fun. St. Patrick's Day can foster teaching concepts like: cultures, geography, exposure to globe/ mapping, mixing colors, good/bad choices, money, full/empty, opposites, etc. Here are some ideas to enhance any early childhood classroom.
- Hats or Badge: In the morning, every students makes a St. Patrick's Day hat or badge to wear. It can be a leprechaun hat or a strip of construction paper with shamrocks glued around. We write their "Irish name" on the hat or badge, by placing an O' in front of their name. O'Lisa, O'Christopher.....
- Leprechaun Feelings Class Book: Have students color various coloring sheets of LessonPix Leprechaun Feelings. Put the feelings pages together in a book and "read" to the class. Have students role play the various feeling as you read their class book. Free Sample Leprechaun Feelings Book:
- Student Class Books: Decorate student photos with St. Patrick's Day clip art and make a class book. Or use St. Patrick's themed symbols or feelings Leprechauns to have students color class books of vocabulary.
- Leprechaun: A popular game in early childhood classrooms is the leprechaun coming in to the classroom while the children are out and messing up the room. (We even add green food coloring to the toilet.) I have seen many versions of this activity; but any way you choose, the children are always excited to clean up his mess in the classroom.
- Leprechaun, Leprechaun, What do you see?: Create an interactive book with the book and symbols
- Trapping the Leprechaun: The students plan, develop, and construct traps to "trap" the leprechaun for the next time they need to leave. In our class, they first learn about the leprechaun when they return from P.E. During center time, the students build a trap and test it to set when they leave the classroom for lunch. The kids come up with some really creative designs!
- -Tr Artic words with themed Picture Cards: Have fun practicing artic words with themed picture cards. Cut out and hide the artic shamrocks around room for students to "discover" good speech is gold.
- Shamrock Seeking: Place lesson related picture cards on the backs of shamrock di-cuts (matching pictures, rhyming pairs, beginning letter sounds, etc.) Hide half of the shamrocks around the classrooms. Give each student a shamrock and have students work together to find their matching shamrock around the classsroom. Check out some of these St. Patrick's Day Clip Art to help.
- Green Snacks & Cooking: Make Rice Crispy Treats with green food coloring.
- Playing Cards: Play Go Fish or Memory with St. Patrick's Day themed playing cards.
- Letter of the week: For the week of St. Patrick's day, I select our letter of the week to be O. (I try to save the vowels and later developing sounds for second semester.) On St. Patrick's Day, we wear our St. Patrick's hats and give everyone "O" names: O'Lori, O'Billy, O'Ally, O'Shante. I tell them, "on St. Patrick's day, everyone can be Irish for the day!"
- Following Directions: Students cut and glue pictures on to the rainbow following the oral directions.
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