*This post contains affiliate links. I can earn from qualifying purchases at no additional cost to you. I appreciate your support for my small business!*
March is finally here!! There is always something so refreshing about the start of March. Warmer weather is just around the corner and it’s time to start thinking about all the spring things, including St. Patrick’s Day! For those of you who don’t know, I am a Teaching Totes Specialist. I love putting together play-based learning kits for preschoolers that are available to rent in my area. But for those of you who are not local to me, I love sharing the elements of my Teaching Totes so that you can recreate your favorites for the little learners in your life!
Read on to find all the fun that I packed into the St. Patrick’s Day Teaching Tote, including some free printables!!
Of course when I am starting to gather ideas for learning activities pertaining to a certain theme, I always start with the books. Children’s literature is the perfect way to present a new theme, spark interest, fuel curiosity and demonstrate concepts. I’ve gathered a few for St. Patrick’s Day, here are my top five picks for preschoolers. I’ve also made it easy to add these stories to your own library, just click the picture!
How to Catch a Leprechaun is a playful story about a leprechaun who manages to evade all of the children’s clever traps. The illustrations are busy and engaging and the story is presented in a fun rhythm and rhyme. This is the perfect story to introduce a Leprechaun Trap STEM Challenge and motivate children to build their own leprechaun traps.
There Was An Old Lady Who Swallowed a Clover! is another addition to the Old Lady series that is perfect for March. My kids LOVE this Old Lady because of the absolutely ridiculous things she decides to swallow. If you have a preschooler who loves silly stories, you will have to include this one in your March reading. It follows the beat of the original story so you can read it like a song or like a story.
Lucky Tucker is a sweet story about a puppy who recognizes all the good luck in his little puppy day. This one is perfect for your animal lovers and is a subtle way to teach children to look for the good in everyday, especially St. Patrick’s Day!
The Littlest Leprechaun is a relatable story about a Leprechaun who wanted a big important job. But every job he tried seemed too hard for a leprechaun his size. Just when he is starting to feel really discouraged, the Leprechaun finds a way that only he can help. If you have a little one who has ever felt discouraged by their size, this is a perfect story to add your March reading.
Pete the Cat and The Great Leprechaun Chase is the favorite in our house! At school, Pete learns that catching a leprechaun will bring you good luck. He sets up a Leprechaun catching service for his friends to help them get good luck. After several attempts, Pete finally catches a leprechaun named Clover! But he learns that he doesn’t need a leprechaun to have good luck, he is already one lucky cat! I love the lesson in this story, the luck you make is better than luck you take. It’s a fun way to teach children to recognize all the ways they are already lucky!
One thing that I always include in a new theme is a sensory bin to go with it! Here is a look at the St. Patrick’s Day sensory bin that I came up with. I always try to use budget friendly materials that are easy to find or recreate. The base for this one is dry chick peas covered with gold paint. Using chick peas as a base is one of my favorite options because they are easy to grasp and are so fun to dig through. The gold just adds a festive shine that is eye-catching and fun. Every sensory bin needs some sort of container to collect and pour out all the little pieces. These green bowls are perfect for the job! I found them in the party section at Dollar Tree, but you can use whatever you have. The foam glitter shamrocks are also from the Dollar Tree and are a great filler. You can count them, sort them by size, stack them or use them to mix up in the bowls. The other festive pieces in this sensory bin are from the Target Dollar Spot. Unfortunately, these seasonal items turn over so quickly and rarely reappear. So if you are not one of the lucky ones that grabbed these, don’t worry! Think green, gold and rainbows and you can add what you find. Another fun option is to dig out those mini witch’s cauldrons from Halloween and reuse them as pots of gold with gold coins or pennies.
(Disclaimer: Always use sensory bins under adult supervision. Because they contain small parts, they are not intended for children under 3 years old. You know your preschoolers best!)
Here’s a fun and festive way to practice colors! Grab color dot stickers and an even number of themed rubber ducks. You can use as many colors as you want. Place one dot sticker on the bottom of each duck so that you create color pairs. Then place the ducks on the table top upright so that you cannot see what color sticker they have on the bottom. Have your preschoolers play a concentration game with the ducks by picking two at a time. If they choose a match, they can keep the duck pair. Whoever has the most pairs at the end wins the game!
Click the pictures below for links to the materials.
One of the most important things to me as a teacher is getting students engaged in the activity. That is why hands-on activities are always my go-to when choosing what to put in my Teaching Totes. STEM activities always deliver, which is why I put together this St. Patrick’s Day Build a Bridge activity.
For this activity, I gathered rainbow tongue depressors, gold coins, festive plastic cups and green foam cubes. One easy way to make an activity festive is to use the materials you already have but only pull out the festive colors. So if you have snap cubes or unifix cubes, just grab the green ones! Same with colored blocks, pom poms, etc.
Before I put this activity into the Teaching Tote, I did try it out with my own children to make sure it was kid approved! If definitely passed the test. I showed Lillian and Emmett the materials and challenged them to build a bridge that could hold as many gold coins as possible. They both got right to work. Emmett built a structure that could hold more weight. He tried balancing different items from the room on top of it. Lillian built a structure that could balance many gold coins. Her first attempt fell over pretty easily so we talked about revising her plan so that she could come up with a new and better idea. She then built a much more stable structure and was able to balance almost all of the coins we had on top. This one is sure to be a hit with your preschoolers!
One of my favorite skills to practice with young children is visual discrimination. This Build a Leprechaun Task Card Activity is the perfect way to strengthen both visual discrimination and fine motor skills. In order to set this one up, place the Build a Leprechaun mats (boy or girl mats to choose from) in front of your preschoolers. Provide the leprechaun cut outs in reach – hats, beards, shirts, pants, and shoes. Have your preschooler pick a card and use the pieces to recreate the same leprechaun. Challenge them to build several different ones. If they make a mistake, you can guide them to self correct by saying, “Let’s make sure this matches.” or “Let’s check this.” You can also make this an open ended activity by allowing them to use the pieces to make their own leprechauns. They will have so much fun with this one!!
Speaking of fine motor skills, here is an amazing way to strengthen the muscles in little hands!! This wooden rainbow has spaces that will hold little color pom poms. Your preschooler can use the tongs to carefully place each pom pom in the desired place. They can choose to create a traditional rainbow or their own colorful design. If your preschooler doesn’t want to attend to this activity long enough to fill all the holes, try taking turns with them so that you carry some of the burden of filling it in. This will encourage building stamina and lengthening attention span.
This rainbow activity is included in the St. Patrick’s Day Teaching Tote. But you can find your own by clicking on the picture below.
With Teaching Totes, I also want to incorporate early literacy and numeracy skills into the activities. Of course with preschoolers, the best kind of learning is the learning that feels like play. I’ve created a few hands-on activities to introduce and practice letters, numbers and counting.
First I will show you the St. Patrick’s Day Light Activity. This is a super fun way to practice naming letters and numbers while searching for gold! This activity comes with 3 sets of cards, uppercase letters, lowercase letters and numbers 1 – 20. Challenge your preschooler to find out which rainbows have gold by shining light on the back of each rainbow card. Some cards will reveal a pot of gold and some will not. On the recording sheet, your preschooler can circle or color the ones with gold as they go!
We use this light tablet for light activities because I love how it lays flat on the table and multiple children can utilize it at once. If you prefer, you can use hand held flashlights and they will work just the same. You can also set up this activity near a window and have your preschoolers hold the cards against the window to reveal the pots of gold. Whatever works best for you!
If you need any of the materials, I took the time to find them for you. Just click the pictures below.
Counting is also an important skill to learn in the preschool years. I’ve included two St. Patrick’s Day themed activities to practice counting with your little learners.
The first counting activity is a chant that you can use in circle time, small groups or one-on-one. The chant goes like this:
Rainbow, rainbow. We found a pot of gold. How many gold coins does it hold?
Say the chant with your preschoolers before choosing a pot of gold card. The cards include numbers 1 – 20, but you can pick out the specific numbers you’d like to practice if you don’t want to do that many.
This activity comes with 3 optional recording sheets. Once your preschooler counts the coins on the card, they can trace the number that they find. Use the sheet that works best for your learners. This makes differentiating easy!
One thing I really love about this activity is that it easily lends itself to a hands-on option. Remember those which’s cauldrons from Halloween? If you have one or some, you can use them instead of the pot of gold cards. Just add gold coins or pennies to the cauldrons and you now have pots of gold! Preschoolers LOVE getting to peek inside the little pots of gold, dump them out, and count the coins with their own hands.
Another counting activity that I’ve included in the St. Patrick’s Day Teaching Tote is this 10 Lucky Shamrocks Rhyme. You can count down from 10 or 5, whatever is best for your little learners. Use the shamrocks on a stick to act out the verses and substitute the names of your own preschoolers as you say the rhyme together. It’s easy to add a little motion to the rhyme as well. This is how it goes.
10 lucky shamrocks grow on the ground.
Waiting for you (point to your child) to come look around (use your hands like binoculars).
They reach for the sun (reach up high)
(Name) picks one (take a shamrock from the bunch)
Now 9 lucky shamrocks wait to be found.
Continue the rhyme, counting down to zero.
I used craft foam from the floral section at Dollar Tree to prop up the shamrocks on a stick and make it easy to pick them. I also found the colored popsicle sticks and Dollar Tree and picked out just the green ones for this activity. This rhyme is FREE in my shop. You can grab it for your learners by clicking the icon below.
Speaking of FREEBIES, here’s another Teaching Tote activity that is also free in my TpT shop. These Shamrock Match the Middle Cards are a great way to practice visual discrimination. Your preschooler can look at the shamrock in the middle of each card and identify the shamrocks that match that one in the middle exactly. Use festive loose parts or clips to cover the matching shamrocks. This will also help strengthen those fine motor skills too!
One more thing!! A Teaching Tote is not complete without a fun craft to wrap everything up! Take a look at these watercolor shamrocks! This craft is easy to do and is so eye catching!
We started this craft by stamping shamrocks all over the page in black paint. We used shamrock shaped pancake molds that we already had on hand. I found these in the Target Dollar Spot last year. And since those items aren’t available anymore, I did take the time to find a set of Shamrock cookie cutters that will work just as well. Just click on the picture below if you’d like to grab them. You can also use bell peppers cut in half for an easy shamrock shape.
After stamping the shamrock shapes in black paint, we let our papers dry completely. Once dry, we used watercolor paints to fill in each shamrock with different colors. You can choose to stick with festive shades of greens or use all the colors of the rainbow. Either way, the end product will be stunning! My favorite kind of crafts have no two products that look alike. I love how Lillian overlapped her stamps. It added space for so many colors and depth to her final product!
That’s it for the St. Patrick’s Day Teaching Tote! If you’d like to take a closer look at any of the printable activities described in this blog post, click the pictures below.
Don’t forget to grab these FREEBIES!
If you are local to Mount Airy, MD or the surrounding areas, you can rent all of these activities to use with your own little learners! Click the Teaching Totes icon to learn more.
Thank you for being here, friends!! 💕💕
Mrs Mama Bird 