Fun, Easy Ways to Celebrate St. Patrick’s Day with Your Toddler
Happy St. Patrick’s Day! This is such a fun holiday to celebrate with toddlers. The bright colors, fun music, and ample opportunities for crafts and activities.
Here are some quick, easy ideas to make this St. Patrick’s Day extra special for your toddler:
Green Feast with an Irish Flag Platter -There are so many delicious green foods, and many of them are super healthy.
Gather as many green fruits and vegetables as you can and serve a smorgasbord to your toddler. Make an Irish flag out of steamed broccoli, cauliflower, and carrots. Use some green food coloring to make special shamrock-shaped pancakes or green muffins.
Pick up vanilla cake mix and stir in green shamrock sprinkles before you bake it to make your own special confetti cake. Blend a shamrock shake -Chocolate Covered Katie has a delicious healthy shamrock shake recipe.
My mother used to go so far as to dye the pasta green at our St. Patrick’s Day dinners (can you tell my family is Irish and Italian?). There are no limits to Green Feast!
Shamrock Scavenger Hunt -Cut out 10 shamrocks. Then, come up with simple, 1-step directions for each one. Try to incorporate as many different movements as you can (e.g., walk, jump, hop, skip, twirl, frog leap, etc.) to build in some gross motor skills.
Your child will have so much fun showing off their moves while they search your house and collect their shamrocks. Make sure to hide a prize at the end of the hunt!
Mess-Free Rainbow Painting -I can’t tell you how much I love freezer bag finger painting activities. They’re so fun, yet not a droplet of paint ends up anywhere it’s not supposed to! For this particular painting, dot a rainbow pattern onto your paper. Then, carefully slide the paper into a freezer bag, close it, and let your toddler go wild!
Rae and I tried this out today, and while it didn’t come out perfectly, she absolutely loved it! We used paints that came in tubs, so I wasn’t really able to dot the rainbow the way I’d planned. The result was super fun…and super blotchy!
I drizzled non-toxic, washable paint in the shape of a rainbow 
Getting it into the baggie was the trickiest part! 
Rae started by painting with her car 
Rae really got into painting! 
Rae loved how the paint moved 
She loved her painting so much that she started kissing it! 
Mwah! 
The finished product! Letting it dry by opening the freezer bag and giving it some time
Irish Dance Party -Irish music is festive, exciting, and likely nothing like anything your toddler’s ever heard before. Turn on some Irish music (YouTube has some great playlists) and dance your hearts out. Bonus points if you can actually Irish step dance!
LUCKY Bingo Game (template included) -Grab some inexpensive St. Patrick’s Day prizes at your local dollar store and use this free template to play a fun, themed version of Bingo.
Race to the Gold -Remember playing 52 pick-up as a kid? This is basically the same concept, only with gold chocolate coins. Buy a whole bunch, pick a spot in your house or yard, and toss them everywhere. Then, set your kids loose to find them all. They’ll have so much fun competing! If your child is old enough, have them count the coins they find before they can eat any to build in some early math skills.
Make Shamrock Crafts Educational -There are about a million great shamrock crafts on Pinterest, like these shamrock suncatchers from The Best Ideas for Kids and marshmallow stamps from Simple Moments Stick.
As you complete the craft, build in some foundational math skills by breaking down the shamrock into basic shapes.
Show your child how the shapes come together to make the shamrock, then broaden the conversation to other items in your house (e.g., “The shamrock’s stem is shaped like a triangle. Can you think of anything else shaped like a triangle?”).
This is such a great way to help your toddler begin to generalize information about shapes!
Leprechaun tag -Find a green hat (or pick up the most festive one you can find at your local Dollar Store) and get ready for some fun!
The leprechaun is it, and players line up on one side of the yard. When the leprechaun shouts go, everyone tries to run to the opposite side of the yard.
If you get caught, you freeze. At the end of the round, whoever makes it to the other side of the yard safely gets to pick the next leprechaun.
Festive T-shirts – Pick up a plain white t-shirt, some green fabric paint, and some stickers from the dollar store and let your toddler go wild creating the cutest, most festive t-shirt you’ve ever seen.
Pair with a shamrock headband, and your child is all set for a school spirit day and a St. Patrick’s Day photo shoot! They will be so proud of their finished product!
Lucky Charms Sensory Tray -This was easy, delicious, and fun! I grabbed a $3 tray from the bargain section at Target, poured in about 1/4 a box of Lucky Charms, and let her have fun.
At first, I encouraged her to find the marshmallows and put them in the tray, but once she tasted them, those marshmallows weren’t going anywhere but her mouth! Eventually, she started using the scooper and really enjoyed the sound of the falling cereal.
Using her scooper 
Searching for marshmallows
This activity turned into more of a snack than a sensory activity, but it’s definitely worth trying! Your child will love playing with their food (and snacking!).
For more fun with your toddler, check out these 10 educational activities for the next time you watch Frozen!
How do you celebrate St. Patrick’s Day with your toddler? I’d love to hear from you!
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