I am so excited about this special preschool St. Patrick’s Day lesson plan! These 5 different preschool activities are designed to help your child with their math skills, reasoning skills, gross motor skills, alphabet knowledge, and more! Enjoy a special day filled with rainbow fun and maybe you will catch a leprechaun!
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Science and Sensory
For this activity, I wanted to have a snack element. Rainbow Pudding is easy to make, and children can easily help.
Start with instant vanilla (or white chocolate) pudding mix. The vanilla pudding is already yellow, so your colors will not be a perfect shade.
Mix the instant pudding according to the directions. Once the pudding is mixed separate the pudding into six different mixing containers and add red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and purple food coloring (one color per container). Allow the children to stir the food coloring into the pudding. WARNING! This activity gets a little messy!
After the pudding is at your desired color, layer the different puddings on top of each other for a rainbow effect. It is best to try to drop the pudding directly on top and center of the cup. Level the pudding layer and then add the next colored layer. Repeat the leveling process. Continue until all of the colors have been added to your cup
Math
Out of all these activities, I might just love this one the most! This activity focuses on sorting and counting while providing a visual representation for children learning ‘more and less’. I have a special spot in my heart for graphs. I know, I’m a weirdo.
For this activity in our St. Patrick’s Day lesson plan, you will need the rainbow cereal graph (Free Download on Google Drive), and you will need a rainbow-colored cereal. I used fruit loops for this activity.
Next, give your child a handful of cereal, and allow them to sort the cereal. Each color (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and purple) has its column. Placing one piece per box, stack the cereal vertically until all the cereal is organized by color.
Have your child count the cereal in each column and write (or help them write) the total in the box provided below!
This helps a child sort as well as one-to-one correspondence. Finally, you and your child can discuss which color has the most cereal pieces and which color has the least!
Art
I stumbled across this puff paint shamrock craft on Pinterest, and I absolutely loved the idea! This blog post from Glued to My Crafts shows you how to create puff paint with shaving cream, glue, and green food coloring!
Need a shamrock template? Here is a link to a FREE shamrock printable!
Language
Get ready to search through a pot of gold! This activity will require dyed rice (gold), a black bowl (pot), and FREE letter coin printables.
Dying the Rice
– Put rice into a gallon zip bag
– Add a tablespoon of rubbing alcohol (isopropyl alcohol)
– Add yellow food coloring to your rice
– Mix until the rice is evenly colored
– Allow rice to dry on a sheet of parchment paper (I allowed mine to dry overnight)
Pro Tip: the more food coloring you add the more vibrant the color will be. If you use a couple of drops of food coloring, your rice will be more pastel. I was generous with the food coloring.
Once your rice is dry, you can add it to your pot, print out the letter coins, and cut them out. I opted to laminate my letters to use them again in the future!
Using the black and white coin page, allow your child to pull out the letters from the pot and then match them to the black and white coin page!
Options to use these coins:
- Match uppercase to uppercase
- Match lowercase to lowercase
- Match uppercase to lowercase
- Match lowercase to uppercase
You can add as many or as few coins to your pot of gold as you would like. If your child is starting to recognize letters, starting with a few might be a better option. If your child is a professional letter detective, feel free to add both lowercase and uppercase to your pot!
Movement
The last activity for our St. Patrick’s Day lesson plan is lovingly called the Leprechaun Chase. To set up this activity, you will need sidewalk chalk.
This activity focuses on the development of gross motor skills. Essentially, you set up an ‘obstacle course’ as your child chases the leprechaun. Each symbol that you create with sidewalk chalk represents a different activity. For example, a swirl means spin. A backward arrow may mean walk backward. Bear footsteps might mean bear crawl. Circle may mean hop from circle to circle. The rainbow may mean gallop or slide along the rainbow.
This activity can be specific to your child’s development, so it might take a little more time to create. Something I create for Evie might be child’s play for one child and then extremely difficult for another.
All children develop at their own unique pace. If you are concerned about developmental delays, it is best to seek advice from your child’s doctor. These activities are designed to be done with a parent. Please supervise your child while doing these activities.
Need more St. Patrick’s Day activities? Visit my other posts!
- A lesson plan based on a favorite St. Patrick’s Day Book!
- Leprechaun Sand!