Luck is in the air! Being Irish, I’ve always loved St. Patty’s Day, but it is often a holiday that comes and goes in the classroom without much notice other than wearing our green. Now, I’ve created five St. Patrick’s Day activities using new STEM design challenges that will be a fantastic way to pay tribute to the day! Almost better than finding a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, right? ?

I love the themes of St. Patrick’s Day: cleverness, tricks & pranks, lore, and luck, and you’ll find these woven into the challenges.

Materials for all St. Patrick’s Day activities are the simple things you’ll either already have on hand or can get at stores like Dollar Tree or Target.

I recommend one challenge per day or week leading up to St. Patrick’s Day, or even all challenges in one day-long 5-event pentathlon! STEM challenges are always most beneficial when done in multiple iterations, but they can be treated as one-off St. Patrick’s Day activities as well.

ST. PATRICK’S DAY STEM CHALLENGES OVERVIEW

A brief description of each St. Patrick’s Day activity is available below. Each challenge has its own blog post with video walk-through and additional details. Click on the challenge title or image to go to a specific post.

St. Patrick’s Day Activity #1: Guard the Gold STEM Challenge

Basic Premise:

For leprechauns, life is a constant struggle to protect their pot of gold from treasure hunters and keep from getting caught themselves!

Working against criteria & constraints individually or in partners/groups, students will design and build one or more devices to help a leprechaun guard his pot of gold from thieves.

St. Patrick’s Day Activity #2: Get the Gold STEM Challenge

Basic Premise:

Working against criteria & constraints individually or in partners/groups, students design and build one or more devices to transfer leprechaun gold from his pot to their own.

St. Patrick’s Day Activity #3: – Leprechaun Lockdown STEM Challenge

Basic Premise:

You may know that leprechauns have the ability to grant three wishes to human captors in exchange for their freedom, but capturing leprechauns in this St. Patrick’s Day activity is trickier than it sounds!

Working in groups against criteria & constraints and equipped with a Leprechaun Lore List, students will design and build a device to lure and safely capture a leprechaun. (Rolling balls are used to symbolize the swift movement of leprechauns.)

St. Patrick’s Day Activity #4: St. Pat’s Snake Snatcher STEM Challenge

Basic Premise:

Individually or in partners/groups, students will design and build a device to rid Ireland of snakes as quickly and safely as possible.

Snakes (10 – 20) are spread over a map of Ireland. Student devices must lift snakes from Ireland and drop them in the surrounding ocean.
Introduce mimics to increase the difficulty!

St. Patrick’s Day Activity #5: Limitless Luck STEM Challenge

Basic Premise:

Pennies found face up, horseshoes, and four-leaf clovers have long been symbols of luck. This St. Patrick’s Day activity combines an element of each famous symbol. Originally conceived as an introduction to probability, in this challenge, students “make” their own luck by creating a four-leaf frisbee designed to always land face-up. A horseshoe-like game called four-leaf frisbee was added as an extension for a little extra St. Patrick’s Day fun.

If you want to see how I ranked these in order of ease of implementation, check out this Facebook Live:

Save yourself time and energy (and use it to head over to your local dollar store!) by picking up the prepared St. Patrick’s Day activities and challenge lessons, which include teacher notes/guide, modifications to increase the difficulty for older students, data recording & analysis handouts, NGSS standards, extension ideas and more.

You can get them individually or treat yourself (and your lucky students!) to the bundle!