Celebrating St. Patrick’s Day with engaging and skill-building activities is a fun way to support child development while incorporating a festive theme. At The OT Toolbox, we believe in using hands-on activities to promote fine motor skills, sensory exploration, and movement, all while keeping therapy sessions fun and engaging. Incorporating St. Patrick’s Day occupational therapy activities into your lesson plans or therapy sessions can help children develop essential skills through play and creativity. It’s a therapy theme that’s fun and functional!
Occupational Therapy Occupational Therapy Activities
From shamrock fine motor activities and leprechaun-themed crafts to rainbow gross motor games (and other rainbow activities), or a fun pot-of-gold sensory play, this page is filled with creative ways to target developmental skills in a fun and meaningful way. Whether you’re working on cutting skills with shamrock templates (find them inside The OT Toolbox membership!), strengthening hand muscles with leprechaun bead stringing, or encouraging movement through treasure hunts, these St. Patrick’s Day OT activities offer something for every child to enjoy while supporting their growth and independence.
Because we love focusing on fine motor skills through play, that means we get to have fun and get creative in our occupational therapy sessions with fun crafts, sensory bins, play-based obstacle courses and more!
Looking for St. Patrick’s Day activities to work on skills in therapy sessions that use a St. Patrick’s day theme? Here, you’ll find four leaf clover activities, rainbow activities, St. Patrick’s Day crafts, snacks, and more. Use these ideas to foster child development of functional skills using a fun theme.
St. Patrick’s Day ideas for Therapy
St. Patrick’s Day Theme in therapy
Having a weekly theme in your therapy sessions makes planning much easier. Each St Patrick’s Day activity can be adjusted to meet different levels and functional goal area depending on the kids that therapists are serving.
Check out all of the St. Patrick’s Day theme activities below. You’ll find resources for teletherapy, fine motor, gross motor, crafts, and more. If St. Patrick’s Day ideas for kindergarten, preschool, or specific age groups are what you’re looking for, you are in luck.
St. Patrick’s Day PDFs
St. Patrick’s Day theme therapy slide decks
Try these St. Patrick’s Day therapy activities in the format of a free Google slide deck. Therapists can go through the slides with the clients on their caseload and foster development of goal areas.
St. Patrick’s Day Write and Sign slide deck– Work on handwriting with these writing prompt activities. Then use ASL to sign the words, building fine motor dexterity, coordination, finger isolation, and motor planning.
Shamrock Visual Perception slide deck– This slide deck includes 7 different visual perception activities. Kids can move the pieces on the slide decks to work on areas such as visual discrimination, visual attention, visual scanning, and much more.
Four Leaf Clover Balance Exercises– Go through the slides and follow the exercises as kids are challenged to balance a pillow or beanbag in different ways (a stuffed animal or roll of socks works too!). Encourage coordination, motor planning, core strength, proprioceptive input, and more.
Rainbow Gross Motor/ Pre-Writing Lines slide deck– Kids can “air write” and copy pre-writing rainbow lines.
Rainbow Emotions Spot It Game slide deck– Work on social emotional skills and visual discrimination and other visual perceptual skills with a matching game.
Rainbow Visual Motor Activities slide deck– Working on handwriting, but the underlying issue of copying forms and visual motor integration is an issue? Kids can copy simple-to-complex rainbow forms and work on pencil control, eye-hand coordination, and more.
More St. Patrick’s day Ideas
St. Patrick’s Day Party Snacks for Kids
To really build fine motor skills and executive functioning in kids, have them make these healthy rainbow snacks. There is a lot of skill-building to happen in the kitchen.
St. Patrick’s Day Songs for Kids
Get the party started with some Leprechaun Songs for St. Patrick’s Day from Let’s Play Music. Wouldn’t these be fun songs to sit the kids in a circle for a preschool sing-a-long?
St. Patrick’s Day Printable Pages for Kids
Set up a little table with some print outs to keep the kids busy and having fun with friends. Scatter a box of crayons and a pile of printable sheets on a little picnic table are all you need.
Cutting strips of paper or foam craft sheets are great fine motor work for beginner scissor users. If you are looking for St. Patrick’s Day activities for kindergarten and preschool ages, have kids cut strips of colorful paper like we did in this rainbow window activity.
St. Patrick’s Day Games and Activities for Kids
If sensory play is your thing, a green rice sensory bin would be so much fun…throw a sheet down on the floor (or a baby pool set up indoors would work, too!) and let the kids in on the sensory fun with 3 Rainbow Sensory Bins!

Rainbow Handwriting Kit– This resource pack includes handwriting sheets, write the room cards, color worksheets, visual motor activities, and so much more. The handwriting kit includes:
- Write the Room, Color Names: Lowercase Letters
- Write the Room, Color Names: Uppercase Letters
- Write the Room, Color Names: Cursive Writing
- Copy/Draw/Color/Cut Color Worksheets
- Colors Roll & Write Page
- Color Names Letter Size Puzzle Pages
- Flip and Fill A-Z Letter Pages
- Colors Pre-Writing Lines Pencil Control Mazes
- This handwriting kit now includes a bonus pack of pencil control worksheets, 1-10 fine motor clip cards, visual discrimination maze for directionality, handwriting sheets, and working memory/direction following sheet! Valued at $5, this bonus kit triples the goal areas you can work on in each therapy session or home program.

St. Patrick’s Day Fine Motor Activities
Use these St. Patrick’s day theme ideas in working on fine motor skills with kids. Amazon links included below.
6 Fine Motor Activities Using Gold Coins– This printable handout on 6 fine motor activities using coins strengthens those fine motor skills using just a handful of coins. We used plastic gold coins in our activity, but you could use pennies as well.
Shamrock Balance Beam– Cut out shamrocks from paper and use them to make a balance beam to incorporate core strength, coordination, vestibular input, and more.
Finger Isolation Clover Fingerprints– Got paint? Use it to make fun fingerprint 4 leaf clovers and work on finger isolation, separation of the sides of the hand, eye-hand coordination, and more. This would be fun with homemade puffy paints, too (just need flour & water).
Bilateral Coordination Clover Activity– Stick a piece of paper to the wall and draw symmetrical clovers to work on bilateral coordination, visual tracking, visual motor integration, and more.
Four Leaf Clover Deep Breathing Exercise & Coloring Page– Take mindful coloring to the next level with this deep breathing exercise. Kids can color and then use the printout as a deep breathing exercise over and over again.

St. Patrick’s Day Gross Motor Activities
Next up are gross motor activities for a St. Patrick’s Day theme in occupational therapy sessions.
My main favorite activity to address balance, coordination, and motor planning in OT sessions is by creating a shamrock balance beam. You can challenge a variety of skills like walking on tip toes, balancing on one foot, stooping and squatting, and more.
Other gross motor St. Patrick’s Day ideas are:
- Draw a giant 4 leaf clover on the wall
- Leprechaun gold coin relay race
- Rainbow hopscotch using colored spots
- Shamrock scavenger hunt with movement challenges
- Pot-of-gold bean bag toss
- Lucky charm obstacle course
- Jumping over “rainbow puddles” (colored floor markers)
- Gold coin toss into a pot challenge
- St. Patrick’s Day-themed yoga poses (leprechaun stretch, rainbow arch, shamrock pose)
- Rolling like a gold coin race
- Leprechaun hat ring toss with large movements
- Irish jig dance party for coordination and rhythm
- Carry the gold (balance small objects while walking)
- Shamrock sack race
- Crawling through a rainbow tunnel
- Tossing golden coins into a target
- Frog jumps over shamrocks
- Pot-of-gold bowling using green bottles as pins
- Treasure hunt with clues requiring gross motor actions
- Parachute games with gold coins or green balloons
- Leprechaun chase game (tag with a St. Patrick’s Day twist)

St. Patrick’s Day Fine Motor Activities
We can incorporate fine motor development into therapy sessions in a lot of different ways. Things like using fake gold coins is one favorite idea. You can check out our:
Here are more St. Patrick’s Day fine motor activities:
- Make rainbow pipe cleaner bracelets
- Picking up and sorting gold coins with tweezers
- Stringing rainbow-colored beads to make a necklace
- Cutting out shamrock shapes from paper
- Tearing green tissue paper to create a collage
- Using clothespins to clip gold coins onto a string
- Tracing and decorating shamrocks with glitter glue
- Placing stickers on a rainbow outline
- Rolling and shaping playdough into leprechaun hats
- Transferring small pom-poms with tongs to a pot of gold
- Threading pipe cleaners through a colander to make a rainbow
- Pinching and placing small sequins onto a leprechaun craft
- Folding paper to make origami four-leaf clovers
- Punching holes along the edges of a shamrock to lace with yarn
- Peeling and sticking gold star stickers onto a chart
- Squeezing a glue bottle to make a rainbow craft
- Using Q-tips to paint tiny gold coins
- Stamping shamrocks with small sponges
- Sorting and placing mini rainbow erasers into sections of an ice cube tray
- Using a dropper to transfer green-colored water into a container
- Scrunching tissue paper to create a textured rainbow craft

St. Patrick Sensory Bins
The nice thing about a sensory bin is that you can target so many goal areas- work on tactile discrimination. Address crossing midline. Work on attention or visual motor skills. Here are some of our favorite St. Patrick’s Day sensory bin ideas:
- Rainbow sensory bins
- Green-dyed rice with gold coins
- Rainbow-colored pasta with scoops and cups
- Shredded green paper with hidden shamrocks
- Dyed chickpeas in shades of green and gold
- Kinetic sand with small St. Patrick’s Day-themed molds
- Cotton balls and rainbow-colored pom-poms for a cloud and gold treasure hunt
- Dry split peas with hidden letters or numbers for a matching game
- Green slime with gold glitter and mini plastic coins
- Dry oatmeal with rainbow-colored scoops and spoons
- Rainbow-colored sensory foam with hidden gold gems
- Green playdough with shamrock cookie cutters and small rolling pins
- Crinkle paper or tissue paper squares in rainbow colors with tongs for fine motor play
- Water with floating green and gold sensory items
- Dyed salt with paintbrushes for tracing letters and shamrocks
- Cornmeal or flour “gold dust” with hidden treasure items
- Cotton balls with peppermint extract for a “lucky cloud” bin
- Ice cubes with frozen gold coins for a melting treasure hunt
- Cereal rainbow (Froot Loops) with scoops and tongs for sorting

Colleen Beck, OTR/L has been an occupational therapist since 2000, working in school-based, hand therapy, outpatient peds, EI, and SNF. Colleen created The OT Toolbox to inspire therapists, teachers, and parents with easy and fun tools to help children thrive. Read her story about going from an OT making $3/hour (after paying for kids’ childcare) to a full-time OT resource creator for millions of readers. Want to collaborate? Send an email to contact@theottoolbox.com.