5 Kinesthetic Learning Activities for St. Patrick’s Day
Celebrate St. Patrick’s Day with activities that get kids excited to move! Combining movement and learning is an effective way to keep kids engaged and boost important brain functions such as memory and focus. These five learning activities are sure to put a smile on a child’s face.
St. Patrick’s Day Themed Yoga
Yoga can be used as both a learning tool and as a brain break. This activity works well for students learning from home or in the classroom. A 10-minute yoga session can help kids build strength and balance, reduce anxiety, and improve focus. These yoga poses are linked to symbols associated with St. Patrick’s Day such as leprechauns, a pot of gold, and a rainbow. For example, the Four Leaf Clover pose imitates the traditional Star Pose, but the arms and legs represent leaves of a four-leaf clover rather than points of a star.
Clover Hop
This Clover Hop activity incorporates reading, math, and movement. This activity works well for students who are in the classroom. To make the game pieces, draw a shamrock on a piece of construction paper, and write a movement inside the shamrock. Movements should incorporate math and may include run in place and count to 10, jump and count by 5s to 50, turn in a circle 3 times, etc. Place the completed game pieces in a path on the floor. To play, start some music, and have students hop from shamrock to shamrock. When you stop the music, students should read the card they are standing on and perform the movement.
St. Patrick’s Day Scavenger Hunt
This exciting scavenger hunt takes students on a movement-filled adventure. This activity works well for students who are learning from home or in the classroom. Download or create your own checklist of St. Patrick’s Day themed items. Items could include a green pencil, a green shirt, a green book cover, a shamrock, or green fruit. Have students choose a different movement to do as they search for each item. They may tiptoe, skip, hop, jump, dance, shimmy, etc., as they search for the items on the list.
Leprechaun Hopscotch
Customize this classic children’s game for St. Patrick’s Day! This activity works well for students learning from home or in the classroom. Go outside, and let children use chalk to draw a rainbow-shaped or rainbow-colored hopscotch path on the sidewalk or on another paved area. Have children fill the squares with pictures of four-leaf clovers, rainbows, and leprechaun hats, and add a pot of gold at the end of the path. Children can jump in a pattern corresponding to certain pictures, count their jumps, or call out the names of the pictures as they jump.
Gold Coin Toss
In this activity, children toss coins into buckets at varying distances to score points. This activity works well for students who are in the classroom. Use pennies or plastic coins for the activity. Create a starting line with masking tape. Set up five buckets at different distances from the starting line. Assign a point value to each bucket with the farthest distance worth the most points. Give each child the same number of coins, and let students take turns tossing their coins in the buckets and tallying their scores. After each student has a turn, find out who scored the most points.
Get Moving!
We hope these fun holiday-themed movement activities will help your students to recharge and refocus.
