St. Patrick’s Day Activities for Kids

It’s almost been a year since the kids’ school closed and we’ve been home more than not. With St. Patrick’s Day approaching and avoiding the parades and other outings, we are looking for something fun to celebrate the holiday. We love some simple things for celebrations and adding a bit of color into our day. See our plan for how we will celebrate St. Patrick’s Day at home this year.

Our St. Patrick’s Day at Home Plan

We usually try to begin celebrating any holiday a few days before the actual holiday. It’s so much fun starting a little early to build up the excitement. The trick is not to start too early or you will become exhausted from the questions. A week is usually just enough time before the holiday to begin. So our St. Patrick’s Day at home activities kick off one week prior to the holiday.

The Week Before

The week of St. Patrick’s Day, we will hang up a large three leaf clover poster on the fridge. Since my kids are dual language learners, we prefer to write these in their target language instead of English. However, use whichever language works for your family. On the poster we wrote, Nos sentamos afortunados porque (We feel lucky because), then my children can add all the things that they feel lucky for right now. This will be extra interesting with Covid and being home most of the last year. Such a good reminder that we can feel lucky even during this challenging time.

We also decorate our house for the holiday. Switching out your hand towels is super easy and doesn’t cost much. You could even just switch to green hand towels throughout your bathrooms and kitchen. We also use the green hand towels around Christmas time too!

Our kids love to make shamrocks in all shadows of green. We have a shamrock template for them to trace. After tracing the template, they can practice their cutting skills. You can make these out of paper, tissue paper, or even streamers for wall decorations. Or switch to contact paper for window clings. You can use ripped green paper to decorate or ask your kids to write a message to the leprechaun. So many options to decorate!

And of course, allow your children this time to brainstorm and plan out their leprechaun traps. Start by making drawings, gathering materials, and building the excitement! Be sure to grab some extra gold coins too.

The Evening Before

We usually begin our evening before St. Patrick’s Day right after dinner. We make up a mint shamrock shake and some green rice krispie treats to enjoy while we set up for the leprechaun’s visit. Both are super easy to make and take but a few minutes. Mint ice cream and some milk make a wonderful shake. Adding in a little green food coloring to your loved rice krispie treat recipe brings the spirit of the holiday alive.

Then we dive into our evening before by building our leprechaun traps. My kids don’t get enough of these and absolutely love the fun of building them and creating silly traps to capture the little leprechaun. We use any and all recyclables and extra craft materials left over from the year. Knowing this day is coming soon, we save up boxes from deliveries and will keep a few washed milk jugs too. Our kids love to go exploring for nature items to use as well, especially sticks. Hopefully the snow melts so that they are able to go scavenging in the yard.

After our traps our built and step, we write a little letter to the leprechaun. Let your children have control over the letter and they can even each write their own letter too. Our children love to taunt the leprechaun a bit and ask for their pot of gold too.

Then we love to snuggle up with a family movie. Our kids love to think they will stay awake to see the leprechaun. Now, we usually watch something new and exciting together, not necessarily anything to do with the holiday. We love to make up some popcorn with green m&ms and green marshmallows mixed in. Keep the snacks simple!

St. Patrick’s Day at Home

The morning of St. Patrick’s Day our children usually start by exploring their traps and seeing the golden dollars left behind by the leprechaun. It’s such fun to see the little mess that was left behind. If you are feeling really adventurous, the pinky side of a loose fist makes a great leprechaun foot, dipped in something green, then use your pinky to make little toes. So simple and easy but can be a bit mess. My kids also love when the potty turns green. A little food coloring goes a long way!

We usually have to send them back upstairs to shower and put on something green because all the excitement takes them away from the usual routine. Our kids absolutely love green so finding green clothes is super easy. In fact, some years they even dress head to toe in green!

Be sure to ask your friendly naughty leprechaun to write a letter back to your children. Ours usually writes something along the lines of – These were your best traps yet! Better luck next year!

St. Patrick’s Day Meals

For breakfast, we will make either green eggs or green muffins. Most likely this year I’ll make some carrot cake muffins with green food coloring to get the nice green look. The orange of the carrots is a nice touch too and the raisins or cranberries are like finding some gold, especially if you get some golden raisins. We love to pair this with a fruit rainbow. We use half strawberries for red, mandarin oranges for orange, pineapple for yellow, kiwi for green, blueberries for blue, and purple grapes for purple. Then we make some clouds out of sliced bananas.

Lunch is a little more low key. We leave our fruit rainbow out all day, or pack up into cups for the kids to take to school. Cucumbers, snap peas, and broccoli make an excellent green veggie choice. And sliced carrots could represent gold coins. We use our shamrock cookie cutter for a special sandwich or wrap with a touch of lettuce too. Adding a little yogurt dyed green can bring some extra fun too.

For dinner, we are going to make a beef and cabbage sheppard’s pie since corn beef and cabbage isn’t a big hit in my house. And we will pair with a special green smoothie. We love a mostly food smoothie, with a little spinach and cucumber added in to give it that beautiful green coloring. If you add pineapple, banana, or mango, it will mask the task of the spinach in the smoothie. If you want something a little less healthy, you can always make your own shamrock shakes with some mint ice cream and milk or use sprite with green sherbet which is always fun too.

St. Patrick’s Day Activities at Home

One of our favorite St. Patrick’s Day activities is to make a melting rainbow. All you need is a bag of skittles, a plate, and some warm water. Arrange your skittles around the edge of the plate. We love to go in rainbow order minus the blue. Then pour the warm water over the skittles and watch what happens. So fun!

Another favorite activity to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day at home is to dye white flowers green. We add a little green food coloring to the water in a vase. Put white flowers of any kind, but we find carnations work superbly, into the vase. Then wait a few hours for the flowers to begin to change colors.

If your children love art, try painting shamrocks the sparkle. To get the right amount of fizz, add baking soda into the paint. We use 3 parts baking soda to 1 part paint. Then allow your children to paint. When they are ready for the sparkle, let them use eye droppers or pipettes to add vinegar to their painting. For an extra touch, put a few drops of green food coloring into the vinegar.

Of course our kids love, love, love slime! So we either mix up some oobleck with corn starch and water or some slime with glue, water, and borax (or contact solution). If you want your slime to be fluffy, add in some shaving cream and watch the magic.

St. Patrick’s Day Scavenger Hunt

We love to squeeze in a scavenger hunt every year for St. Patrick’s Day. Around our home it’s still usually pretty cold, but sometimes we happen to get a stroke up luck with the weather. So sometimes our scavenger hunt is outside and other times we are indoors depending on the weather.

1. Something Green
2. Something Gold
3. Find a Penny
4. Something Shiny
5. Something Irish
6. Find a Clover – 4 Leaf is Lucky
7. Something Fast
8. A Hat
9. Tiny Footprints
10. A Rainbow
11. Something in a U Shape
12. A Plant
13. A Leprechaun Pot
14. Something Red
15. Something with the Number 7

St. Patrick’s Day Books

Of course, no holiday is ever quite complete without a few favorite stories. Our kids love to read and being able to pull in a few holiday specific books really helps to introduce new books into their nightly reading. In addition, we can all read together as a family! Always a plus.

The Night Before St. Patrick’s Day by Natasha Wing is a family favorite. This story details Tim and Maureen’s experience of setting their St. Patrick’s Day traps to catch their very own leprechaun. But what should you do if you catch a leprechaun?

This story introduces children to a little bit of Irish culture, which is always a plus. Not only does the author introduce the bagpipes, but we learn a lot more about leprechaun’s too. Your children will be drawn into the hilarity that pursues.

Another family favorite is How to Catch a Leprechaun by Adam Wallace. This is one story your children will want to read again and again. They won’t be able to get enough of the leprechaun and his sneaky moves.

Bring inspiration to your leprechaun trap building as you read along. You’ll be able to see all the different traps that the children built and maybe come up with your own ideas too. Plus you love that this book highlights rhyming words to engage your children even more.

Old Friends Making a Return on St. Patrick’s Day at Home

Then of course, we have a few favorite characters who make an appearance in St. Patrick’s Day theme books. Be sure to not miss out on their adventures.

Pete the Cat – The Great Leprechaun Chase by James Dean is a favorite because we just adore Pet the Cat in our house. We have yet to find a Pete the Cat book that we don’t love no matter which author wrote it.

Who better than to try to catch a leprechaun than the silly cat, Pete? Not only does Pete delight the young readers, but the leprechaun, Clover, will bring a smile to your face. And of course, there is a Pete the Cat lesson to be learned as well.

There was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Clover by Lucille Colandro continues the ridiculous pattern of chaining different items to swallow. What in the world will she swallow now? But even more importantly, why? Your children will enjoy the silliness and mine always love the ending.

This is a fabulous story to work on sequencing. As you follow along the story, put the items that she swallows in order and then see if you can get them correct at the end of the story.

The Pout-Pout Fish Lucky Leprechaun by Deborah Diesen is always so fun. Who doesn’t love to see a pout-pout fish dressed up like a leprechaun. Your children will delight in the journey to find their very own pot of gold and most likely learn a few new words along the way.

While this Pout-Pout Fish story has a different rhyme scheme and style than the ones you’ve grown to love, our children enjoy the hunt and absolutely love the pictures. Pout-Pout Fish doesn’t disappoint.

We’d Love to Connect with You

With spring break approaching, be sure to check out our post on Dual Language and Spring Break to practice your child’s target language. And of course, we have parent-teacher conferences right around the corner too. Then summer comes so quickly, so let us help you keep the learning going through the summer. And if your child is learning a language, we’ve got summer language tips for you too! Last put not least, don’t forget about school placement letters or teacher request letters for next school year.

Do you love celebrating St. Patrick’s Day with your children? What are your favorite activities? Drop us a comment below and let us know. Looking for more practical solutions for real life problems? Join our growing family by subscribing to our newsletter below.

Hi, I’m Nicole.

Here at Creatingbutterflies we provide families with practical solutions to real life problems for everything parenting, scouting, dual language, and enjoying time outdoors. We are a family of 6 with 4 wonderful becoming bilingual children who loves scouting, camping, and hiking with their family. Mom is an educator and dad is a firefighter/paramedic.