Fun STEM Activities for St. Patrick’s Day

To celebrate St. Patrick’s Day with your students and stay true to your curriculum goals, try these fun activities and experiments for St. Patrick’s Day!

Rainbow War
Students investigate fractions while trying to reconstruct a rainbow and collect golden coins!

Materials:

• Colored strips of paper (ROYGBIV) – 2 of each color for a 2 player game
• Golden coins (chocolate, printed, etc.)
• Rainbow War Cards (drag and save to your desktop – print at least 2 copies)

What You Do:
Place cards in a pile face down. Kids pull a card off the pile and flip it over. The player with the larger fraction wins and takes one of the color paper rainbow strips.

If a player has a gold coin, the gold beats the rainbow fraction, unless the card has a full rainbow (7/7). The player with the gold coin takes the number of coins it says on the card. No one gets a rainbow strip.

If a player has a shamrock, shamrock beats a rainbow fraction card, unless the card is a full rainbow. The player with the shamrock chooses any color rainbow strip.

There can be two winners of the game. The goal is to collect all the colors of the rainbow (each rainbow strip). The other way to win is to collect the most gold coins. Players can’t count their coins, until someone has collected all the colors of the rainbow.

Free printable versions here, print more than two of each sheet for a longer game.

8 Ways to Explore With Skittles
1. Online Skittles collaboration project – Skype and compare results with schools across the U.S.
2. Skittles Density Column – Cool Science at Home
3. Skittle Chromatography – Awesome Crazy Guyz
4. Skittle Color Separation – Parents: Homeschool Den
5. Fizzle a Skittle – Gigi Reviews
6. Skittles Riddle Book – Fun with a variety of math concepts
7. Skittle Arrays / Fractions – E is for Explore
8. Crack a skittle open like a clam shell?! – Parenting

Free Printables!
1. Skittles Graph, Tally, Sort – Golden Gang Kindergarten
2. Skittles Math Center – Erica Bohrer’s First Grade
3. Skittles Place Value – Beacon Learning
4. Skittles Fractions – NWACC

Leprechaun Trap
Challenge students to construct a trap to catch a leprechaun using any materials they would like. Then have them write a how-to paper on how someone can easily catch one using their special contraption!

Article by WeAreTeachers and Erin Bittman. Erin is a second-/third-grade student teacher in a multi-grade classroom at a German Magnet School. She attends the University of Cincinnati. Check out her blog, E is for Explore!