The Cutest St. Patrick’s Day Crafts for Preschool That Are Big on Fun

I’m not Irish, but I still love celebrating St. Patrick’s Day. With silly leprechauns, colorful rainbows, and lucky shamrocks, there’s no shortage of St. Paddy’s Day fun for kids!

If you’re looking for St. Patrick’s Day crafts for preschool, I’ve got plenty of simple, engaging ideas to encourage creativity and keep little ones entertained while also strengthening their fine motor skills.

This collection of crafts includes everything from rainbows and shamrocks to leprechaun-inspired projects, all designed with little hands in mind. You’ll find plenty of ideas to make this St. Patrick’s Day extra special.

Preschool Rainbow Craft Projects

Add a pop of color to St. Patrick’s Day with these preschool rainbow art and craft projects—simple, fun, and great for fine motor skills!

Rainbow Cut and Paste Craft

This adorable rainbow craft was designed with fine motor development in mind. The printable fine motor craft will help your kids get some cutting practice, line tracing practice, and they can even build hand strength by punching holes in the craft template.

Rainbow Paper Tearing Craft

Are you looking for a super easy-to-prep rainbow craft. This tearing paper craft is the ticket. All you need to provide is a printable rainbow and scrap paper in all the colors of the rainbow.

Kids LOVE tear art projects, but the cool thing is that the printable images can also be used for a variety of different types of activities. This video shows you LOTS of ways to use the rainbow paper tearing printable. But you can use these methods with all the simple craft printables.

The spring set of tearing paper printables also includes a pot of gold, a shamrock, and a leprechaun’s hat.

Rainbow Dropper and Squeegee Painting

Prep some paint and eyedroppers for your kids. I thinned a squirt of tempera paint with some water.

Show them how to add drops of color at the top of their paper, and then spread the paint down the paper with a squeegee. Don’t have a squeegee? Use a piece of stiff cardboard or foam core.

Rainbow Bleeding Tissue Paper Craft

Prep this activity by stapling squares of bleeding tissue paper to the top of a piece of white construction paper. Tape the paper to a plastic tray. Kids can use a spray bottle to spray water on the tissue paper and then show them how to tip the tray to get the rainbow of colors to run down the paper.

Rainbow Painting with Multiple Brushes

I stuck 6 paintbrushes into a pool noodle and dipped them into a rainbow of pain colors. It was so much fun to make rainbow trails across the paper. This would be a fun activity to do on a large roll of paper.

I struggled to find a way to apply paint to six paint brushes at the same time. My solution was to create a special palette by taping pieces of straw to a piece of cardboard. This created little channels to hold different colors of paint. See the details in this rainbow painting video:

Rainbow Name Craft

This easy-to-customize name craft will help your kids get some cutting practice, and will help them learn the letters of their name.

Rainbow Paper Chains

Put your kids to work hole-punching colored strips of paper, and then help them staple them together to create a paper chain. Why the hole punching?

1. Kids think using a hole punch is EXCITING, so this is an engaging activity.
2. Hole punching is a FANTASTIC way to build hand strength.

Additional Rainbow Craft Ideas

• Paper Plate Rainbow – Apply cotton balls to half a paper plate to create a cloud. Then, add colorful streamers from the flat end of the plate to make a rainbow just like this one from Teaching Mama.
• Rainbow Ice Painting – Freeze a mixture of water and tempera paint in an ice cube tray. Don’t forget to insert a popsicle stick so that kids have something to hold onto. Once frozen, kids can use the paint cubes to make rainbows like these from Living Life and Learning.

Fun Shamrock Crafts

A roundup of St. Patrick’s Day crafts for preschool wouldn’t be complete without some shamrock crafts. Here are some that your kids will surely enjoy.

Shamrock Shape Cutting

My favorite thing about these fold and cut activities is watching kids’ faces as they unfold the symmetrical cutting activities.

I like to use the cutting activity as a starting point for fun St. Patrick’s Day crafts. Kids love punching holes in the four leaf clover shape before unfolding it. You can also provide crayons, paint, sequins, stickers, etc., to decorate their simple craft.

Here’s a video that demonstrates all the ways to use this simple shamrock cutout.

Shamrock Man Craft

Get out the googly eyes and pipe cleaners, and you can turn a cut out shamrock shape into a cute little shamrock man.

We used the fold-n-cut shamrock shape to create these cute little guys. We did cut off the stem….because we didn’t want them to look like little private parts 🤣. I know…I’ll never look at a shamrock the same way again.

Shamrock Cut and Paste Craft

Here is a shamrock cut and paste craft that includes line tracing and hole punching.

Leprechaun Crafts for Preschoolers

Mischievous and fun, leprechauns are a favorite part of St. Patrick’s Day! Here are some leprechaun crafts that are simple, fun, and full of personality.

Cut and Paste Leprechaun Hat Craft

Here is a printable fine motor leprechaun craft. You can add a paper plate if you like and give your kids supplies to make paper leprechaun faces to attach to the hats.

Paper Plate Leprechaun Craft

Make a simple hat from construction paper. Cut out the center of a paper plate, and then paint the trim with orange paint. Add a popsicle stick, and you have an adorable leprechaun mask that is perfect for a St. Paddy’s Day parade, like this one from Our Kids Things.

Celebrating St. Patrick’s Day with preschoolers is about creativity, fun, and a little bit of magic. These St. Patrick’s Day crafts for preschool offer easy ways to bring the holiday to life while building fine motor skills and getting those creative juices flowing. I hope you and your learners have a blast trying some of these projects.

Buy the Printable Craft Activities in The Store

Do you need some help getting started? These printables will help make your crafts a breeze to prep.

Purchase the Printables on Teachers Pay Teachers

Do you prefer to shop at Teachers Pay Teachers? You can also purchase the St. Patrick’s Day crafts for preschool kids at my TPT store.

Additional Craft Ideas for Kids

Purchase Craft Supplies on Amazon

Here are some supplies that I used in the craft activities above. The links below are affiliate links. Amazon will not charge you an additional fee if you purchase something from a link, but a small portion of your purchase will be used towards the cost of maintaining this website.