Saint Patrick’s Day isn’t just about wearing green, shamrocks, and good luck. There is a lot of history behind the holiday and many ways to bring Saint Patrick’s Day traditions to your classroom for all students. Overall, there are so many fun and engaging activities to learn about Saint Patrick’s Day and Ireland in your classroom.ย
How Do You Teach Saint Patrick’s Day History?
First, St. Patrick’s Day offers a perfect opportunity to bring history and problem-solving to life in the classroom. Engaging activities like reading comprehension exercises about St. Patrick, Irish traditions, and the origins of the holiday can spark curiosity and deepen your students’ historical understanding. To make the experience even more interactive, a themed escape room can challenge students to work together as they solve riddles, decode messages, and complete puzzles tied to Irish history and Saint Patrick. Also, check out some books and websites that complement the activities in your classroom! These activities build critical thinking and collaboration skills and create an exciting and memorable learning environment.
Saint Patrick’s Day Escape Room
First, start March with a Saint Patrick’s Day Escape Room. The escape room is ready to print and go with engaging reading passages for students to learn about St. Patrickโs Day history, March, traditions, the first parade, Irish ancestry, and holiday celebrations.ย
Each escape room has five stations:
- Fill in the Blank
- Find the Paragraph
- True or False
- Lock Combination
- Multiple Choice
First, students will move through five interactive stations with their reading passage. Next, at each station, they’ll solve challenges to figure out a 4-digit code and uncover a letter clue. By the end, theyโll piece together all the clues to crack the final ALPHA code. To officially escape, students need to provide the correct 4-digit code for every station and the final ALPHA code. In the end, they’ll also show proof of completing all the stations.
Of course, no prior knowledge is required! All the answers come straight from the reading passage, making it a perfect way to introduce key vocabulary, people, places, or events for your unit. Also, itโs a fun, engaging way to preview and build knowledge.
Overall, students can work in pairs or individually and race to complete the stations. As they read the informational text, answer questions, and uncover clues, theyโll stay focused and motivated to unlock that final code in this Saint Patrick’s Day Escape Room!
Who Was Saint Patrick?
Did you know Saint Patrick wasn’t Irish? It’s true! In fact, he was born in Great Britain and taken prisoner by Irish raiders at 16. He eventually escaped but later returned to Ireland as a priest
History.com has a wealth of videos and information to share more about Saint Patrick. Your students will also like using Brittanica to research facts about Saint Patrick and other topics related to St. Patrick’s Day. In addition, the website now has an AI component where your students can ask a chatbot questions about the topic, in this case, Saint Patrick!
Saint Patrick’s Day Scavenger Hunt
Another engaging way to teach about Saint Patrick’s Day is with a scavenger hunt. No, you’re not just looking for shamrocks or people wearing green! Your students will go on a scavenger hunt led by 10 reading passages and clues about Saint Patrick’s Day History!
First, set up the clue cards throughout the classroom. Next, students pick any of the reading cards to start with. Each card has a passage to read and a question at the bottom labeled โcode wordโ. Then, the code word for that card will guide them to a different card, but hereโs the twist: they wonโt know exactly where to find the answer right away. Of course, this means theyโll need to explore, skim, browse, and revisit the clue cards and reading passages multiple times to track down the information they need. Overall, the more they read and revisit, the better the information sticks, making this both a fun challenge and a great way to reinforce learning!
Your students learn about Saint Patrickโs Day history, traditions, first parade, Irish ancestry, and holiday celebrations with this fun Saint Patrick’s Day scavenger hunt.ย
You can use this active learning activity throughout March in your classroom. Here are some suggestions on when to use it in your social studies classroom!
- Anticipatory Sets
- Early Finishers
- Gallery Walk
- Stations or Centers
- ย Sub Plans
- Rewards
- Individual Work
- Partner Activities
- Extension Activitiesย

Saint Patrick’s Day and Ireland Books
Read all about it! Your students will learn a lot about Saint Patrick through games and videos, but dive into current and historical Ireland with some fun and picturesque books.
DK Road Trips Ireland (Travel Guide)
Whenever you teach about Saint Patrick and Saint Patrick’s Day, your students will become curious about the land where Saint Patrick spent a lot of his time, Ireland. Add a cross-curricular study and plan a road trip using math, geography, and reading. Check out this beautiful book with photos across modern Ireland.
Ireland (Horrible Histories)
Of course, your textbooks probably have information about standard Irish history, but why not dive into the silly and crazy stories of Irish history? This book is written in a newspaper style with engaging stories and illustrations to make learning history fun!
Saint Patrick’s Day Trivia
Trivia competitions are so much fun for kids! Try a trivia Saint Patrick’s Day Digital Escape Room.
Of course, there’s nothing to print or prep. Everything is on one website, making it simple to do as a whole class, individual, or team activity on devices.ย
As students navigate through the amusement park-themed digital escape room, theyโll explore 9 exciting attractions and tackle a total of 35 questions. This engaging trivia challenge is perfect for sparking critical thinking and honing deductive reasoning skills, all while helping students build or review their knowledge of Saint Patrick’s Day in a fun, interactive way.
The activity is also self-checking, and your students will stay engaged with different types of questions throughout the trivia escape room:
- ย One drag-and-drop word unscramble
- Multiple Choice with answer bank
- Questions that indicate a โdirection” on a compass with a drag-and-drop word bank
- Fill in the blank questions where they โdecodeโ the missing word
- Multiple Choice checkboxes
- Matching Q and A that disappear when correct
- True or False that disappears when correct
- Multiple Choice with drop-down menu
- Lock combination that involves very basic math (addition and subtraction: 1-10)
- Decoded fill-in-the-blank ciphers
Of course, St. Patrick’s Day is an important celebration during March for your students. Rather than just wearing green and passing out green shamrocks and candies, use these enriching activities to teach your students about the history of Saint Patrick and historical and modern-day Ireland. Overall, there are so many fun ways to learn about Saint Patrick in your classroom.ย