St. Patrick's Day Activities For Toddlers and Preschoolers

There are so many ways to celebrate and learn about St. Patrick's Day through sensory play and early learning activities! Check out 18 of our favorite St. Patrick's Day activities that are low prep, high-engagement, and tons of fun for toddlers and preschool children!

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Looking for high-quality, developmentally appropriate, hands-on resources for St. Patrick's Day that save you prep-time and still ensure your kids are engaged in the best learning experiences possible? I would love for you to check out the March Is For Rainbows Preschool Printables Pack and see what inspires you and your kids!

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St. Patrick's Day Activities for Toddlers & Preschoolers

1. Shamrock Magnetic Letter Match

If you have a magnetic door, using shamrock cutouts taped to the vertical surface is a perfect invitation for magnet play! So easy to create, and can be easily adapted to fit any theme!

Benefits:

• Letter and Sound Recognition

• Locating Letters within the Alphabet

• Matching

• Magnet Play

• Vertical Activity & Unusual Location = High Engagement!

You can modify or adapt this setup to match numbers, letters to sounds (use pictures for beginning, middle, or ending sounds), fewer letters, or lowercase letters!

2. Shamrock Sticker Match

Set up some St. Patrick’s Day themed play with stickers! I had some stickers that were small and circular, so I just added some dots to the shamrock outlines to indicate sticker placement, but you can totally make this work with pieces of masking tape or stickers of any size and shape! We did this activity at our sensory table and also as a vertical activity at the window!

Benefits:

• Turn-taking: my turn, your turn as you work alongside the child

• 1:1 correspondence (this is seriously SUCH a key skill that is way harder for kids than you might think!)

• Fine motor work: peeling and placing stickers works those tiny hand muscles!

• Exposure to visual patterns, lines and curved strokes, and positional phrases (next to, on top of, this side, etc.)

There are SO many ways to adapt this activity but here are just a few:

• Color-code the stickers for an extra layer of challenge and skill practice

• Peel the excess backing off of the sticker sheet to reduce frustration and increase independence

• Create AB, AAB, etc. patterns with your dots and have children match them or extend them using their stickers

3. Rainbow Caps & Containers

If you love low prep learning ideas then this is a great one to try! Perfect for St. Patrick’s Day and all year round!

• Color Recognition

• Fine Motor

• Counting

• Sensory Play

• Match Caps & Containers

• Size & Comparisons

• Fine Motor Practice

• Investigate Capacity

• Imaginative Play

• Sorting By Color

• Discuss Favorite/Least Favorite

4. Try Your Luck Tinker Tray

Here is an easy way to put together a simple tinker tray with a variety of concepts, using green mad matter, cookie cutters, dyed chickpeas and pots o’ gold, addition flash cards, and character figurines.

5. Rainbow Stickers Color Match

Do you use vertical activities? We always have loved them, and when time is limited and the need for engaging activities is high, vertical play is is a huge help! Why? It takes up zero extra space, there is basically nothing to clean up, one activity lasts a week or more, and my older guy can go back to it at his leisure! It's totally child-directed and independent play, super low prep, but with tons of benefits:

• Color Recognition & Matching

• Natural Light

• Fine Motor

• St. Patrick’s Day Play

• Shoulder Strength

• Pre-Reading Skills

6. Literacy-Based St. Patrick's Sensory Play

Using our St. Patrick's themed cookie cutters, rice that I dyed in three shades of green, a muffin tin, green and “gold” magnetic letters, and some sensory bin scoops and cups, this simple setup offers children an invitation to learn and play in a variety of exciting ways!

Benefits:

• Investigate capacity and spatial awareness with filling cookie cutters and muffin tin spaces

• Early literacy and alphabetic knowledge (adapt to every level- focus on putting letters in order, sounds, letter names, building words, etc.)

• Color and shape comparisons

• Sensory experience (appeals to all five senses!)

• Fine motor development

• Holiday-themed play

• Imaginative play
  

Adaptations you can easily make to meet the needs of all learners:

• Choose specific letters to use and work with

• Offer gloves to children who don’t want to touch new textures

• Add a book about Ireland or St. Patrick’s Day for extra literacy integration

7. St. Patrick’s Day Pom-Pom Play

Integrating social studies education into a sensory play set-up by introducing the Irish flag into the mix is a perfect way to level up a holiday-themed activity! Super simple set-up with lots of possibilities, using nothing more than Pom-pom balls, scooper/tweezers, cookie cutters, and old Tupperware containers lined with construction paper!

Benefits include;

• Color Sorting

• Fine Motor Development

• Spatial Awareness & Capacity (fill in the cookie cutters!)

• Imaginative Play

• Discuss Irish symbols, traditions, flag, and facts as you play!

Modify or adapt this setup to make sure all learners can benefit by:

• Sort color-coded letters or shapes for an added layer of complexity

• Offer Pom-Pom balls one by one to help children feel less overwhelmed by the sorting task

• Add a book about Ireland into the set-up for high-interest nonfiction connections

8. Irish Word Families

Using some Irish-themed colors to increase engagement with CVC word practice is perfect for St. Patrick's Day activities, play, and learning! Plus, with much of my husband’s heritage coming from Ireland, we talked about word families, as well as our own family’s Irish roots! Learning about our own racial and ethnic identities is essential for raising antiracist kids that have a sense of cultural pluralism. Check out Britt Hawthorne's content for fantastic info on this concept!

These are sticker letters, but we use them often just as letter tiles so that we can get multiple uses. I usually just let my son choose if he wants to stick the letters on top of the prepared words or just build the words without sticking. Adding in some green mad matter as a sensory base offers even more extra play options!

9. Green Color Explosions

Science is always a fun way to frame festive learning ideas! Food Coloring + Baking Soda + Vinegar = Green Explosion! (or as my little one said... “cool”)! Early learners gain so much from an experience like this!

• Cause and Effect

• Chemistry for Toddlers!! (Chemical reactions that cannot be reversed)

• Pouring (Adapt or modify by using eye droppers, syringes, spoons, etc. to meet fine motor needs)

• Color Science- we started with blue and yellow and eventually created green with repeated “explosions” and mixing

• Bonding between adult and child through shared experience and conversations

10. Shades of Green Color Science

Mixing two colors in water is always a perfect way to explore the science of color. Explore the idea of different shades of the same color, from lighter to darker, offering both science and language concept development opportunities. Make it green, and now it’s a festive St. Patrick’s Day activity!

11. Rainbow Road

Using markers (but crayons or paint will work perfectly, too!) and white craft paper, I created a rainbow road for our toy cars. This may seem like a a non-activity at first sight, but there is SO much language and cognitive development that can be done with a setup like this when you add letters, numbers, and shapes to the color strips!

• Car and Truck Play

• Vocabulary Development

• Letter, Shapes, and Numbers

• Pre-Writing (tracing a curve with a toy car!!)

• Color Recognition

Plus, you can easily adapt this activity to focus on only one skill, or increase the challenge to work with addition, subtraction, or building words!

12. Rainbow Macaroni Color Sort

Continue your St Patrick’s Day activities by heading over the rainbow with this color sorting, sensory, & fine motor activity!

Benefits:

• Sensory

• Fine Motor

• Color Vocabulary

• Categorization

You can adapt this activity by changing the size of the holes in the rainbow, changing the type of pasta, or offering different tools with which to pick up the pasta for added hand muscle work!

13. Jumbo Vertical Sticker Page

Using a vertical, holiday-themed poster activity that is both low-prep and high-engagement is a great way to work on:

• Sticker Art

• Holiday-Themed Play

• Letter & Word Recognition

• Shoulder Strength

• Whole-Body Engagement

• Natural Light

• Fine Motor

• Creative Expression

14. Character Break-Out: Green and Gold Ice Cube Edition

I froze a few character figurines in ice, added some green and orange food coloring to some others, and set them up next to some water dyed a light green! Added some scoops, a potato masher (in case the breakout called for some smashing!) and other tools to enhance the play!

Benefits:

• Water Play: capacity, scooping, cause and effect, scientific properties of water (melting!!)

• Sensory Play: pouring, dripping, colors, smashing, water can have a profoundly calming effect, cold vs. warm

• Imaginative Play: character conversations and scenarios

• Fine Motor: twist caps, pouring and transferring, holding and using tools

• Sense of Accomplishment: when those characters finally break free it build self-esteem, sense of agency, and self-concept!

15. Ireland Sensory Play

I used our book of Saints and our Saints coloring book for learning more about St. Patrick and his feast day! Paired it with some Irish-themed toys and sensory play cookie cutters are my go-to for sensory puzzles and outlines for them to fill up!

16. Making Green: St. Patrick’s Day Color Mixing Science

Mix water and food coloring to create blue and yellow water bins, and then let the mixing begin! From a teacher standpoint, nothing is cooler than simply letting them explore, and then asking them what happens when you mix blue and yellow together, and they tell you it makes green!! Playing is their work, and learning through investigation and play is the way to go, friends!! Learning benefits include:

• Cause and Effect

• Fine Motor

• Calming Effects of Water Play

• Color Science

• Capacity, Scooping, Pouring

• Self-Concept and Independence

• Exploratory/Experiential Learning (they remember and learn WAY more!!)

17. Upcycled Card Collage

Want to enjoy those St. Patrick’s Day cards and colors for a little while longer but need to organize and make space for the next season? Cut them up, add a few craft supplies, and make a seasonal collage to hang up for everyone to see and enjoy for a few more days! Benefits include:

• Artwork: Creativity, Process and Express Emotions

• Fine Motor- Glue, Tape, Rip, Cut

• Seasonal Play & Display

Easily adapt this activity to fit any holiday or season that presents you with decor, cards, or other materials that make for great up-cycled artwork!

18. Simple St. Patrick’s Day Sensory Play

Simple to set up, and still a fantastic and open-ended invitation to play using dyed beans, St. Patrick's Day cookie cutters, measuring cups, and a bowl.

• Holiday-Themed Vocabulary

• Sensory Play

• Exposure To Measurement

• Investigate Capacity

• Sensory Puzzles (Fill the Cookie Cutters!)

• Scoop, Pour, Dump, Sift

• Shape Exploration (Pre-Reading & Pre-Math!!)

• Imaginative Play

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If you enjoyed these activities and want to snag some resources to help your preschoolers stay engaged all season long, I would love for you to check out these resources and see what inspires you and your kids!

And don't miss out on this FREE Ultimate Guide and Toolkit for making your early childhood classroom more inclusive! Click to learn more.