Make St. Patrick's Day Fun & Educational for Students

St. Patrick's Day is a good day for teachers to teach their students a little bit about the Irish culture as well as the meaning of St. Pat's Day. Even if students in the class are not Irish, this is a widely celebrated day in which teachers and parents can turn learning into a little bit of fun!

Games:

Pin the pot of gold on the rainbow. Cut out a large rainbow or have the students in your class color a rainbow (you can download templates or make one on your own). Have each child color a pot of gold which you previously cut out for them and write their names on it. They can use these as their game pieces to try to pin onto the rainbow. Winners can get small prizes like green pencils or gold covered chocolates.

Shamrock piñata: Inexpensive piñatas can be purchased at a party store or even a bargain store. Fill the piñata with goodies and have some fun during your St. Patrick's Day

Trivia: Depending on the age level, make questions vary with difficulty. For example, for younger students have questions pertaining to green items (e.g. name a green vegetable). For older students, ask questions about the history of St. Patrick's Day. You can previously teach a short lesson about this and use this game as a way to "test" their retention of the material. For each question correct (divide the class into two teams), place a gold Hershey's kiss into a pot. The winning team gets the pot of gold!

How many words can be made out of Shamrock? (e.g. ham, rock, sham). Other words can be used such as Irish, Leprechaun, Saint Patrick's Day, etc. You can also turn this into a spelling quiz.

How many green jellybeans in the jar? Fill a jar with green jelly beans or gold covered candies and have kids guess how many are in it. Closest one gets the prize! You can turn this into a good lesson for mathematics as well as test conservation tasks in young children by using another jar that is different in size (taller or shorter) filled with jelly beans. Pour jellybeans into a larger glass and ask for children's understanding of whether there or more, less or the same amount of jelly beans. You can also take a handful of jellybeans and lay them on the desk; then, spread them out to test if children understand that there are still the same number of jellybeans.

Hot potato using Irish music and a potato (you can give a lesson about potatoes growing in Ireland and discuss famine and the impact of this on a culture).

Musical chairs: use large shamrocks as the chairs: when the Irish music stops, everyone has to scramble to sit on a shamrock.

Tell the story of the Blarney stone and have kids decorate rocks they bring in or that you collected on a field trip together.

Teach students about the colors of the rainbow, throwing a lesson in about light and prisms. Bring in prisms and show them how they work using sunlight. Then have students draw rainbows to hang up or make rainbows out of different colored construction paper and hang up as mobiles.

Bingo: Instead of Bingo, it could be called "Lucky". Markers can be shamrock stickers and you can either call out numbers or make it into a trivia game where they have to provide correct answers to trivia items before placing a shamrock on it and calling out lucky!

St. Patrick's Day scavenger hunt: Hide Hershey kisses wrapped in gold throughout the room and provide clues on little shamrock papers for the kids to go to the next one.

Play Irish music and teach them a jig or an Irish song. Many Irish songs are easy to remember as they rhyme or are fun. You can find numerous ones to choose from on the internet.

Food:

Snacks for the day can be any food colored green such as green pancakes, potatoes, green jell-o, green pudding (pistachio), green tomatoes or other vegetables such as celery or broccoli, salad, sugar cookies with green sprinkles or frosting, green Gatorade or juice, limeada, or green milkshakes with chocolate mint ice cream. If you have access to a stove you can teach the students how to make a simple Irish Soda Bread.

Decorations:

Have children cut out shamrocks they have traced from an outline you provided. Have them write their name on it and hang each one on a wall. Alternatively, you can hang shamrocks from the ceiling or a window with green ribbon or yarn. Students can string small shamrocks, rainbows or leprechauns together with holes punched out and yarn to make garland.

Have the students make Leprechaun hats and wear them throughout the day using green construction paper. You can use round ice cream containers and cover them with green felt or construction paper, cut out black felt or paper for hats and white for a buckle. Or have kids color paper plates with green markers or crayons, then have them cover a small round container with construction paper and glue onto the plate for the top part of the hat. They can create their own buckle and glue onto the bottom part of the hat where it meets the brim.

With some thinking and planning ahead of time, you can easily turn St. Patrick's Day into a variety of lessons about prisms, rainbows, the history of St. Patrick's Day, teach about Irish culture or music while also having a good time.