St Patrick’s Day for Kids: Our Favorite Crafts, Activities, and Games

Do you have your green clothes ready? St Patrick’s Day is in a few days, which means it’s time to celebrate luck and positive thoughts with lots of food, dancing, music, and green parades. Children love holidays and they’ll absolutely adore St Patrick’s Day. So, if you need some ideas for fun activities, crafts, and games for St Patrick’s Day for kids, you’ve come to the right place! 

In this article, we’ll mostly focus on the practical side of the holiday and share resources, games, and crafts that you can easily implement in your home or the classroom. However, if you want to find out more about the history and meaning of St Patrick’s Day, then please don’t hesitate to check out our Saint Patrick’s Day Facts & Worksheets bundle. Apart from 43 pages of interactive worksheets, we also included key facts and information for building a solid lesson plan. 

In the meantime, keep reading to find out how to celebrate St Patrick’s Day with your kids or students. 

St Patrick’s Day Activities for Kids

Let’s start with some exciting activities in the spirit of St Patrick’s Day for kids of all ages. There are many things you can do, but for this list, we picked five different activities for kids who love to move, make things, solve things, and learn things! 

Irish Dancing

The Irish Dance is a group of several traditional dances that originated in Ireland. They’re influenced by many styles and traditions, while the Ceili dance, Set dance, and the most known Step dance are some of the popular variations we typically observe during the feasts. These dances encompass elaborate footwork that’s just mesmerizing to watch and we’re sure that kids would be excited to try to imitate some of these dances. 

You can choose to follow a tutorial and teach kids some basic choreography they can follow or simply play some great Irish songs and dance freestyle while keeping the upper body stiff (Irish style). 

Here are two videos of kids performing the “Reel”, a traditional Irish dance and an Irish song for St Patrick’s Day that you can use in the classroom or at home. 

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The following is a playlist of different St Patrick’s Day songs for young children:

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St Patrick’s Day Recipes for Kids

If you’re someone who enjoys spending time in the kitchen with your kids, trying out new things, and making delicious treats, then this activity is right up your alley. After all, St Patrick’s Day is known for its unique and yummy treats. So, what can you and your child make? 

Here are some easy recipes that you can make together:

• St. Patrick’s Day Marshmallow Treats
• Mint Chocolate Chip Cookies
• Crispy Leprechaun Hat-treats
• St. Patrick’s Day Green Cookies for Kids

Interactive Worksheets

Some kids would rather enjoy some fun games, such as solving puzzles, finding words, playing guessing games, mapping out celebrations all around the world, and the like! 

If you think this is something your child would enjoy or you want to entertain your students for a whole hour, then all you need is to follow the link to our Saint Patrick’s Day worksheet bundle and download the full collection. With one click, you’ll have more than 40 pages of different activities for St Patrick’s Day for kids and students. 

St Patrick’s Day Family Movies

We won’t skip over some classic family traditions, such as watching movies for St. Patrick’s Day.

If you want to chill with your kids and spend an incredibly fun yet relaxing night, then we got your back. 

Here are our kid-friendly movie picks for this holiday: 

• The Secret of Kells (2009) 
• The Luck of the Irish (2001)
• Magical Legend of the Leprechauns (1999)
• The Best of Riverdance (2005)
• The History of St. Patrick’s Day (2010)

Books for Kids 

Finally, for the readers who love going through beautifully illustrated books and learning new things, we prepared a list of St Patrick’s Day themed books, both educational and imaginative.

• How to Catch a Leprechaun by Adam Wallace
• The Night Before St. Patrick’s Day by Natasha Wing
• The Luckiest St. Patrick’s Day Ever by Teddy Slater
• Celebrating St. Patrick’s Day: History, Traditions, and Activities – A Holiday Book for Kids by John O’Brien Jr.
• Pete the Cat: The Great Leprechaun Chase by (Includes 12 St Patrick’s Day cards, a fold-out poster, and stickers.)
• There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Clover! by Lucille Colandro (author) and Jared Lee (Illustrator).

St Patrick’s Day Crafts for Kids

Celebrating St Patrick’s Day with kids can also take a creative and artistic turn. Here are four easy-to-follow crafts for the kids who’d like to make interesting St Patrick’s Day themed decorations. 

Shamrock Wand

The Shamrock wand is an easy art project that can entertain young kids for hours. Not only will this wand look like a clover, but it also has the ability to send good luck to anyone who needs it, and the one wielding it decides who deserves it! Sharing this story with kids gives this craft a deeper meaning and makes it twice more exciting. 

To make it, you’ll need green construction paper, a construction stick, scissors, glue, and glitter (we recommend gold, but you can use any shade you want). 

Start by folding the green paper in half, then cut out half a heart at the folded side, so when you open the cut-out piece, you get a full heart! Repeat the same process three times. Once you have three green hearts, glue their pointed ends together to form a clover. Glue the construction stick at the bottom of the clover. You can also use something else as a stick as long as it holds the clover. Finally, glue glitter on the edges of the clover and the holding stick, and you’re done. 

Carrot Shamrock Stamps

Another art project is teaching kids how to make vegetable stamps and paint some interesting pictures with them. For St Patrick’s Day, you can use carrots to make some four-leaf clover stamps. 

To do it, cut one carrot in half and draw a four-leaf clover on the cut side. Then, gently carve away parts of the carrot’s surface that don’t belong in the clover you’ve just drawn. The final result should be a clover bump on the carrot. 

Once you have the carrot-stamp ready, dip it in some paint and then stamp it on a paper sheet. 

In the classroom, children can make a variety of stamp shapes and then trade shapes and colors to make their own unique drawings. 

Paper Plate Leprechaun

Leprechauns are one of the symbols of St Patrick’s Day. In Irish folklore, they’re classified as a mischievous type of fairy. They also look very unique – green clothes, a big black hat, and an orange beard. However, where the leprechauns are, there’s gold. You can easily use this in your favor and tell kids that once they make a leprechaun, they’ll get a coin or coin-like chocolate – your choice! 

To make the paper leprechaun, kids will need a white paper plate, green and black construction paper, glue, scissors, orange paint, a brush, and other colored pencils.

On the backside of the paper plate, somewhere in the middle, ask kids to draw a man’s face. Then, with the orange paint, show them how to easily draw a big beard by painting the edges of the plate! 

While the paint dries, cut the green construction paper into a hat and decorate it with pieces of black paper. When you’re done, glue the hat on the paper plate to finish the final look of the leprechaun. When you’re done, give your child a treat!

Fingerprint Rainbow & Pot of Gold

Finally, the last DIY art project revolves around creating a pot of gold and a big rainbow. This activity is best done after children have learned about the story of St Patrick’s Day and the symbols associated with the holiday. 

To make the pot of gold and the rainbow, kids will need a white sheet of paper, black and yellow construction paper, glue, scissors, and paint in all colors of the rainbow. 

Begin by drawing a pot on the black construction paper. Then, cut it out and glue it on one side of the white construction paper. Take the yellow paper and cut out small circles. Glue each of the circles over the pot and around it so it looks like it’s full of gold. Once you’re done and the glue is dried, you can continue to the messy part. 

Dip a finger into one color and press the fingertip on the white paper to leave a fingerprint mark. Continue the whole row with one color going from the gold toward the other side of the paper. Once you’re done with one color, wash the hand and repeat the same procedure with a different color, making a row just above the previous one. Repeat until you get the full rainbow. 

St Patrick’s Day Games for Kids

The fun doesn’t stop here! In addition, we’ll share another four activities for St Patrick’s Day for kids to enjoy. But, this time, we’re sharing games that you can play together with your kids, or students can play in a group. 

Leprechaun Maze

If your child loves brain games and challenges, then solving a maze to get the leprechaun to the gold is the ultimate rush. You can use a very simple maze for the youngest kids or a more challenging one for older ones. Alternatively, you can use progress in difficulty and award the children for each maze they complete, starting from the easy ones and go toward more complex mazes. 

On DailyMesses you can see an example of a maze for St Patrick’s Day for kids. 

Pot O’ Gold Coin Toss

Every exciting game comes with a little bit of friendly competition, just like our Pot O’Gold Coin Toss. You can organize a challenge in the classroom between classmates or at home between family members. Either way, it’s a great way to spend some time with kids, have fun, lots of laughs, and win prizes! 

The game is quite simple. Kids compete in who can throw the most coins into a small, black pot of gold at a certain distance. Each player should get an equal amount of turns and tries. The one who gets the most coins inside the pot is the winner! 

Gold Hunting 

Gold hunting is an amazingly simple game that can still keep kids entertained for hours. How to play? Well, tell kids a leprechaun came and hid the gold and treats somewhere in the house. If they find the reward, it’s theirs!

Leprechaun Tag 

Leprechaun Tag is a highly social game and best suited for the classroom. To play it, divide students into two groups – fairies and leprechauns. Keep one student in the middle while you play the role of the tagger. The tagger has sticker taps on them and their job is to tag all the leprechauns with a sticker (sticking the sticker on them). Once a leprechaun is tagged, they’re frozen. Fairies can set leprechauns free, but if they’re tagged while trying to free a leprechaun, they must trade places with the tagger. Fairies try to free all leprechauns while they run from the tagger. The tagger tries to freeze all leprechauns to win or to switch places with a fairy.  

Before You Leave

St Patrick’s Day honors the patron saint of Ireland, which is why, in America, the holiday celebrates Irish-American culture and heritage. St Patrick’s Day festivals are a long-standing tradition, so we hope that our article inspired you to organize some fun activities for kids this year. 

Of course, if you need more help, don’t forget that we have a St Patrick’s Day for kids facts and worksheet collection on our website. And, while you’re there, check out the other worksheets we offer as we’re sure that you can find something for your next unit. 

Last but not least, if you haven’t already, subscribe to our newsletter and get the latest collections and articles because, we assure you, many great things are coming up this period!