Break up the long month of March with some St Patrick’s Day activities for school. There are many St Patrick-themed simple activities you can do that will tie into your curriculum your students will enjoy.
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St Patrick’s Day Reading Comprehension
Reading comprehension is an easy way to take a theme and tie it into the curriculum. You are already teaching reading, might as well make it St Patrick’s Day themed! I have an entire March-themed reading comprehension set here which has fiction and nonfiction passages with differentiated vocabulary, comprehension questions, and answer keys because you are busy (there is a digital version as well)!
Hit the Standards
In my state, we use the Common Core Standards. Sometimes I would make activities to meet the standard themed for the month that we were in. For example, in my March Activities and Centers (click here to see more), I created activities themed for March for fact and opinion and cause and effect. These quick activities allow me to see which students are getting it and which students need more support.
Use Technology
A favorite activity in my classroom was web quests. My students would crawl the internet (teacher-approved, safe sites) to find the answers to questions. This St Patrick’s themed web quest is part of my March Fast Finishers which can be found here. These are excellent activities for fast-finishing students. To learn more about keeping fast finishers engaged check out this blog post.
St Patrick’s Day Science
Create rainbows using prisms. This is a great and simple experiment to learn about how light is refracted and separated into wavelengths. I ordered these prisms from Amazon for this experiment. Your students will hold a prism and shine a light through it. They will need to slowly turn the prism in their hands until the rainbow is visible.
Sink the pot of gold. Use gold coins or pennies a tub of water and a cauldron and see how many coins will sink the pot of gold. I got the coins and cauldron from Amazon. I linked it below, but if you look around enough in advance the dollar sections of many stores carry these types of items.
Want these science activity sheets for free? Get them here!
Read Stories about St Patrick’s Day
I am a big supporter of reading aloud for kids of all ages and themed books are a great way to bring some of the festivities into the classroom. Here are some of my favorite Irish-themed books that are perfect for reading aloud. Click on the title or picture to be taken to Amazon to purchase.
Jamie O’Rourke and the Big Potato
This lighthearted Irish folktale is sure to bring a smile to your student’s faces. Jamie O’ Rourke is lazy but he has a chance to meet with a leprechaun and ends up growing a massive potato.
My own children are big fans of this series and enjoy reading these books regularly. The children in the book set out traps for the leprechaun. This is the perfect intro to a STEM activity on creating a leprechaun trap!
This is another Irish folktale and the illustrations in this book are beautiful.
Play Folk Music for Kids
Pandora There are many folk and Celtic playlists for kids to put on. I linked the “Folk Music for Kids” playlist here.
Spotify The web player on Spotify is another place to search for music for your class. Be warned the playlist I linked does have a piece that talks about drinking.
YouTube This playlist has 12 Irish songs. There are many available and you can choose the ones that best suit the needs of your classroom.
More Free St Patrick’s Day Printables
Click on the blog hop image to go to the next post for some MORE St Patrick’s Day activities and ideas:
