Kindergarten St. Patrick's Day Ideas

Story and Snack Activity

• Share a story about St. Patrick's Day with the children. For example, read "The Hungry Leprechaun," by Mary Calhoun. Follow the story with a special snack for your hungry leprechauns. Use green food coloring to create and serve green milk, sugar cookies, muffins or bread dough, cream cheese and whipped topping. Mint chocolate chip or pistachio ice cream topped with green sprinkles is an easy snack option for St. Patrick's Day.

Grass Seed Activities

• Kindergarten children can make leprechaun people. Let each child place dirt into a medium foam cup. Add grass seed and water. Tell the children to draw a face on the cups with markers. The children can watch the leprechaun's "hair" grow and enjoy giving them weekly haircuts. For another grass seed activity, cut a green sponge into a shamrock shape. Wet the sponge, add grass seed to the top of the sponge and place it in a sunny location. Keep the sponge moist by adding water when needed as grass grows on top of the sponge shamrock.

Shamrock Matching Activities

• Cut out shamrocks from construction paper to create matching activities. Vary the activity to address specific learning skills, such as color matching and identification of number sets. Cut out shamrocks from different colors of construction paper. Let each child select a shamrock. Tell the children to find a child with the same color shamrock to practice color matching. Create a number set identification activity by cutting out a shamrock from one color of paper for each child. Label one half of the shamrocks with a number and make dots that correspond to the numbers on the remaining shamrocks. For example, if you have 16 students, label eight shamrocks with the numerals one through eight. For each remaining shamrock, draw a set of dots that matches one of the numbered shamrocks. Give each child a shamrock with instructions to find a child whose shamrock matches their own.

Leprechaun Step and Sing Activity

• Trace the shoes of each child on adhesive-backed green shelf or "Contact" paper. Cut out the children's footprints and apply them to the floor to make leprechaun footprints. Let the children walk or skip while following the footprints and singing a leprechaun song. Sing this leprechaun song to the tune of "I'm a Little Teapot:"

  I'm a little leprechaun,

  Quick as can be,

  I hide my gold under a tree.

  If you see my rainbow,

  You may find,

  Where I left my gold behind!