St. Patrick’s Day Celebrations in the Classroom

St. Patrick’s day is almost here! With March comes a whole bunch of fun themes and activities! Today’s blog post is all about St. Patrick’s Day Celebrations in the Classroom.

If you are looking for general tips about holidays in the classroom, check out an old post HERE. For other March ideas visit my March category on my blog! For other seasonal activities, consider March Binder Tasks, March Directed Drawing, or March Vocabulary Activities.

* This post may contain affiliate links. This means that if you click and end up purchasing, you pay no extra cost, but I earn a small fee for referring you.

What Is St. Patrick’s Day?

Understanding St. Patrick’s Day just got easier with my St. Patrick’s Day social story. This social story explains the holiday in a clear and easy way to understand for kiddos. It also reviews rule and expectations, like NO PINCHING! Grab this social story for your class here.

How To Manage Behaviors On St. Patrick’s Day

When teacher’s think about St. Patrick’s Day in the classroom, most teachers also think about the problematic behavior of pinching! Like all the other holidays throughout the school year, it is safe to assume some challenging behaviors may arise. Below are some of the behaviors we could expect to see this holiday that may need some re-teaching beforehand!

School Celebrations: This lesson is kind of a given if your school celebrates holidays. If you are having a celebration or performance the routine is going to be different. Review expectations before the celebrations begin!
I Won’t Hurt Myself: This lesson is an important reminder for students who resort to self injuries behaviors when overwhelmed or stressed. Holidays can be overwhelming, and we must teach them the importance of taking care of themself!
Taking Turns: This lesson is important for school celebrations because often times with celebrations come fun activities. These activities typically require sharing and taking turns with peers.
Keeping my hands and feet to myself: A lot of students are taught that you must wear green on St. Patrick’s Day and if you don’t wear green, you get pinched! This of course is not a rule at schools and students must be reminded ahead of time that it is never okay to pinch other even if they are not wearing green.
Keeping my Clothes On: True story, one time I had a student who kept trying to take their shirt off because they didn’t wear green and they were upset. It is important to remind our students that we me must keep our clothes on at school.
Changes in School: Like all holiday celebrations, many routines change. It is important to review with students ahead of time the important of flexible thinking and tolerating the changes in schedule due to the celebration!

St. Patrick’s Day Picture Books

St. Patrick’s day has some of the cutest children’s books in my opinion. I have a list of some of my favorite books for next month. These 12 books listed below are perfect for the whole month of March and St. Patrick’s Day! These sure do spruce up your St. Patrick’s Day celebrations in the classroom.

How to Catch a Leprechaun by Adam Wallace
There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Clover by Lucille Colandro
The Luckiest St. Patrick’s Day Ever by Teddy Slater
The Night Before St. Patrick’s Day by Natasha Wing
Pete the Cate: The Great Leprechaun Chase by James Dean
Ten Lucky Leprechauns by Kathryn Heling
That’s What Leprechauns Do by Eve Bunting
Jamie O’Rourke and the Big Potato by Tomie DePaola
The Story of Saint Patrick’s Day by Patricia A. Pingry
The Story of the Leprechaun by Katherine Tegen
Pout-Pout Fish: Lucky Leprechaun by Deborah Diesen
S is for Shamrock by Eve Bunting

Communication on St. Patrick’s Day

To help you build communication in the classroom this holiday season, I have created a St. Patrick’s day communication board. This can be used during all of your holiday discussions, lessons and art activities. You can grab it here.

St. Patrick’s Day Videos and Songs

I love incorporating seasonal videos into morning meeting and calendar routine. Here are a few that I love for the classroom!

St. Patrick’s Day Goodies

St. Patrick’s day has a lot of fun themes! These are some of my favorite goodies that can help spruce up your St. Patrick’s day celebrations in the classroom.

St. Patrick’s Day Crafts and Sensory Activities

Below are some fun ideas for the holiday that I wanted to share with you! In March I like to do a lot of things with R A I N B O W S ! ! ! To read more about Rainbow sensory fun, click here.

I am absolutely in love with this craft idea from Mess for Less! I wish I seen this idea for when I was still in the classroom so I could have done it with my students.

This super simple shamrock sun catcher is super cute for the classroom from Three Little Ferns.

Do you do cooking in the classroom!? Check out this Leprechaun Popcorn from Mom Foodie!

Holidays can be a blast in the classroom if planned out ahead of time. I know this blog post is full of all sorts of goodies, and I completely understand if you can’t incorporate all of these ideas every year. I do hope you found some of these tips and tricks helpful for this holiday season. If you plan on discussing more holidays this year, check out my Holiday social stories discounted bundle!