What is St. Patricks Day?
St. Patrick's Day observes of the death of St. Patrick, the patron saint of Ireland. The holiday has evolved into a celebration of Irish culture with parades, special foods, music, dancing, drinking and a whole lot of green.
Fun & simple activities you can do at home!
Leprechaun traps are become a fun way to celebrate the holiday at home with children.
This activity can be done with anything you have at home. It also builds creative thinking skills, working on family bonding, and your child will be using math skills, testing ideas, and doing problem-solving!
This idea comes from Little Bins Little Hands, by Sarah McClelland. This site is a wonderful place full of ideas for STEM activities to do at home and in a classroom. Please check out there How to Build Easy Leprechaun Traps with planning tips here!
Bingo is a great way to practice and even review new vocabulary that St. Patricks Day can offer. Words such as gold, clover, horse shoe, luck, and so on are likely to be new vocabulary for your family.
There are a lot of great free printable bingo cards. Some simple easy to use bingo cards can be found with Pre-K Pages. They have some great printable ideas for early aged learners. To make this activity more challenging replace the images with words.
See Pre-K Pages free printable bingo card here.
Fun books to add to St. Patricks Day
A very popular book for the season is 'How to Catch a Leprechaun' by Adam Wallance. "How to catch a leprechaun? It's tougher than you think! He'll turn your whole house upside down. He's quicker than a wink!"
It is a wonderful book full of rhythmic pages and bright colors. The book would pair well with the Leprechaun traps activity.
Another great book is 'That is What Leprechauns Do' by Eve Bunting. "The three leprechauns Ari, Boo, and Col have a job to do. They must race to where they've buried the pot of gold and dig it up before the rainbow comes. The clouds are already gathering, so there'll be no time for mischief along the way." The Delightful illustrations from a Caldecott medalist and the playful text written in Irish style make this a perfect story for St. Patrick's Day.