Dying carnations green is a simple and fun activity for St. Patrick's Day that can also illustrate the path that water takes when being soaked up by a plant. Get one white carnation for each child and cut the stems at an angle for the best absorption. The dye solution is 1 oz. of green dye per pint of warm water. Explain to the children what you are going to do and discuss the parts of a flower. The children place the carnations into the vase of green water and over the course of the day watch the flower turn green.
"Pin the Tail on the Donkey" can easily be adapted for St. Patrick's Day. The donkey becomes a leprechaun and hats are used instead of tails. This activity uses a leprechaun cut out of poster board (either drawn freehand or traced from a projector image). The amount of detail you use on the leprechaun is up to you and your artistic abilities. Sticky tack works well for attaching the leprechaun to the wall, which should be at a height that the children can comfortably reach. Allowing the children to decorate the hats with paint or glitter adds an art project to the activity. Double-sided tape works well for attaching the hat to the leprechaun, but be careful that it doesn't mark the walls. The rules for this activity are the same as "Pin the Tail on the Donkey." Another twist on the activity is to use a large rainbow and individual pots of gold.
There are many children's stories about St. Patrick Day. Reading a story to the children before beginning an activity can get their imaginations working. After reading a St. Patrick's Day book, discuss the legend of St. Patrick driving all the snakes out of Ireland. The children can all pretend to be snakes and show off their snake motions. Grab a flutophone (a plastic wind instrument much like a flute commonly used in preschool and elementary school) to start a parade around the room. The flutophone gives you the opportunity to play music for the children while they pretend to be snakes; it represents a gentle, preschool version of the stick St. Patrick used.
Combine preschool lessons with almost any holiday to enhance your curriculum. For St. Patrick's Day, use cereal to teach the children about charts and sorting. Bring in a box of cereal with marshmallows in shapes like rainbows, pots of gold, shamrocks and moons. Each child should have a small container full of the cereal and marshmallow pieces. A simple chart, with a drawn shape for each type of cereal piece across the bottom and the numbers zero to 10 up the side, works best to illustrate the basic use of graphs and charts. The children sort the cereal to match the categories on the chart. They then place the marshmallows and plain cereal pieces in the appropriate columns on the chart and count the numbers for each column. They can easily see which marshmallows are the most prevalent and whether there are more marshmallows or plain cereal pieces.