For young children, make math picture problems using shamrocks with different leaves. For example, have a one-leaf clover plus a three-leaf clover picture problem and then have your students add the leaves up for a total. For older children, give each child a bag with 10 pieces of Lucky Charms cereal and have them figure out the fraction equivalent of the marshmallows and the cereal pieces. For instance, if the child has three marshmallows and seven cereal pieces, his fraction would be 3/7. You can also use leprechauns to teach multiplication to your students. For example, have a leprechaun holding 10 pots. Show students that 1 times 10 equals 10. Keep adding more leprechauns holding 10 pots to show that 10 times 2 equals 20, and so on.
Ask your students to write about what they would do if they were to find a pot of gold. Have younger children write a few sentences and illustrate their idea, while older children should write at least a paragraph. Read children stories about leprechauns and St. Patrick's Day. If your school doesn't have any suitable books on site, print stories from educational sites such as Kennesaw State University's Web Tech or the Enchanted Learning website.
For younger grades, teach children the colors of the rainbow and then give them coloring sheets to fill in with the proper colors, or you can ask them to think of as many things as possible that are the color green and then draw them. Older children can create art projects related to leprechauns. For instance, ask children to draw their idea for a humane leprechaun trap. Another idea is to incorporate potatoes -- which have played an important role in Ireland's history -- into a leprechaun craft. Have your students cut facial features from construction paper and then glue them on potatoes to create leprechaun faces. You may want to use googly eyes, as well. If you do not have the money or ability to get real potatoes, cut potato shapes out of brown paper bags and have your students decorate those instead.
Teach your students about Ireland, especially the basics such as where it is located on a map and the name of its capital. You can also discuss and describe leprechauns, four-leaf clovers and about St. Patrick and why he has a holiday named after him. For older children, create word-search or word-scramble puzzles incorporating words that are associated with St. Patrick's Day such as leprechaun or Ireland. Another idea is to use St. Patrick's Day related words as your spelling words for the week.