Five Fun Activities for Saint Patrick's Day and a FREE Game

Ever feel like you teach from one holiday to another? I love celebrating all.the.holidays! This post has 5 fun activities that we do to celebrate Saint Patrick's Day!

Once again on a Sunday night I find myself in a hotel room…this time in Charlotte, NC.  To say the least, last week was a whirlwind of a week. I started off the week in Grand Rapids, Michigan for the two day Common Core Seminar. Can I just say, I don’t think I have ever seen that much snow. It was so deep that I actually looked into a snow bank outside of the hotel room window. I was able to catch up with my good SDE friend, Kim, and I also met a new friend Jill from ABC’s and Polkadots.  Tuesday night Andy flew into Grand Rapids and Wednesday morning we headed out to Chicago…more cold and snow! 
The ASCD Early Childhood Conference in Chicago is a HUGE conference…1,500 teachers!  Good Golly! This is AN EVENT to say the least….Lots of teachers, great sessions, and super nice location, PLUS….. I get to see some of my favorite people! There’s Kim Jordano from KinderbyKim, Kathy Griffin from Kathy Griffin’s Teaching Strategies, Shari Sloane from kidscount1234.com, Deanna Jump from Mrs. Jump’s Class, Deedee Wills from Mrs. Will’s Kindergarten, and Linnea that keeps us all straight! Of course Andy was there, too. Someone had to take the picture!

Saint Patrick's Day Fun

Do You Believe in Leprechauns?

This is a fun center for math. Invite the children to take a survey from their friends by asking them if they believe in Leprechauns. As they ask their friends, they should make a tally mark in the yes or no column. Once they have asked several friends (no more than 8 for either column), they color the graph to match their tally marks. Now they are ready to analyze their data. This is great practice for teaching ways to compare data! The favorite part, walking around and asking their friends!

Sharing the Gold

This is another fun math center. You need a game board with 4 sections, a dice with multiples of 4, and some counting pieces. Invite the children to roll the dice and count that many pieces of gold. Invite the children to try strategies to determine how many pieces of gold belong in each pot. Once they have a "fair share", they record the share on the recording page.

Spin a Parade

One more math game...Saint Patrick's Day is often celebrated with many parades. For this activity, the children will create a parade and indicate the ordinal position of each thing in the parade. First, invite the children to spin the spinner.  Select a clip art picture of whatever the spinner lands on and place it on the parade game board.  Continue until the game board is full. (They many have several of the same thing depending on where the spinner lands.) Glue paper versions of the parade. Sequence the ordinal position cards and record the ordinal position for each thing in the parade.

Where is the Gold?

This fun cut a sentence book is perfect for Saint Patrick's Day and teaching sentence structure. Make each child a pot of gold book. Invite them to cut off the first sentence. We are working on phrases such as "said the girl." The children put that phrase at the end of the first line. Manipulate the remaining words to complete the sentence.  Find the picture to match the sentence and glue it under the flap. Repeat with all 4 sentences.

The Shamrock _ock Book

This is a fun, easy literacy center. Make a book for each child.  Invite the children to cut apart the pictures. Glue one picture on each page. Now, decide what the "onset" needs to be added to "ock".
These ideas are from this Hooray for Saint Patrick's Day unit.

Sight Word St. Patrick's Day Game

You can grab this fun St. Patrick's Day Game at the bottom of this blog post. Here's how to play:

Spread the gold coin cards out on the floor.

Pick two children and give each one of them a fly swatter with a leprechaun picture.

Say a sight word.

Invite the two children to find the coin with the sight word.

"Swat" the gold coin with the fly swatter.

Peek at My Week

Here are my St. Patrick’s Peek at my Week Plans. You can download them for free by clicking on the image.