If your child has the lucky fortune of being born on or around St. Patrick’s Day, try throwing them a St. Patty’s Day themed birthday party.
(image credit: Pinterest)
Serve up some green food, decorate with lots of leprechaun paraphernalia, engage the guests in St. Patty’s Day games. What’s that… you don’t know any games?! Well we happen to know 10 that are fabulously easy to prepare, fun for kids of all ages, and are extremely on-theme for the holiday. Check them out!
1 – Dance An Irish Jig
Select a few Irish celtic songs and assign each song a specific Irish dance (learn more about Irish dances here). Gather the kids around and teach them the dance steps. Once everyone has learned the moves with its assigned song, let the good times roll! Play snippets of each song at random and have the kids dance the correct steps to the associated song. It’s sure to be a mad dance off!
2 – Pot Of Gold Treasure Hunt
Stash a pot of gold chocolate coins in a secret hiding place and scatter four leaf clover notes throughout the party space. Each four leaf clover should have a written clue on it, directing the treasure hunter to the pot of gold coins. For added fun, have the clues be more specific as the treasure hunter nears the pot, as this will let them know they’re getting closer!
3 – Gold Coin Team Race
Set up 2 empty labeled pots in the open and scatter gold coins throughout your party space, some in the open, some well hidden. Have the birthday guests separate into 2 teams with the objective to find as many gold coins as possible in X amount of time. The team that gathers the most combined gold coins into their assigned pot at the end of the game wins!
4 – Pass the coin
Select a “leprechaun” and have him/her cover their eyes while you hand a coin to one of the other players (all sitting around in a circle with the leprechaun in the center). At “go”, have the seated players pass the coin behind their backs to one another in any direction. The leprechaun is supposed to guess who has the coin, when he/she suspects that they know, they’ll yell “STOP”. If the guess is correct, the 2 players switch and start a new game.
5 – Create A Leprechaun Look
Assign a craft table area where the children can create their own leprechaun looks. Have headbands, green hats, and cut-out beards at the ready. Encourage the kids to use their creativity to create their looks. Green hats can be glued (adult supervision required if using hot glue) to headbands and beards can be colored in and tied around the back of their heads! To take things to the next level, have personalized St. Patrick’s Day shirts for each participant to wear!
6 – Find The Four Leaf Clover
Hide just a few four leaf clovers throughout the party space for the guests to find. But to up the difficulty, also hide plenty of three leaf clovers. Have them hunt for the four leafed versions in order to win a prize! This can be a timed game or a running event throughout the length of the party with the prize for the winners presented at the end.
7 – Who’s The Leprechaun?
To play Who’s The Leprechaun, choose one child to be the guesser and have him/her close their eyes while you select another child as the “leprechaun”. The object of the game is to have all the children dancing in a group to Irish music. The leprechaun is secretly the leader and he/she will do whatever dance they wish while the other players copy. The guesser is to observe the dancing and try to guess which player is the leader (the leprechaun). Have the kids be as sly as possible to make guessing more difficult. When the guessing player correctly identifies the leprechaun, they get to choose the next guesser for a new game.
8 – Kiss The Blarney Stone
Draw or print a picture of the Blarney Stone with different areas representing numerical points and hang it on a wall. Put lipstick on the players, blindfold them and send them to plant a kiss on the Blarney Stone board. The player to rack up the most points by kissing the highest scoring areas win a prize!
9 – Gold Coin Toss
Gather some empty pots in one area of the party and draw a starting line a few feet away. Have the players stand behind the line with the object being to toss their gold coins into the empty pots. See how many of their coins they can toss into the pots. You can award prizes based on the amount of coins tossed into the pots!
10 – Rainbow Relay Race
The object of this game is to see which team can create a rainbow first. Divide guests into two teams, then half each team and have them face one another from across the party. Hand each half of each team a roll of colored crepe paper (you can stagger the crepe paper holders to shake things up). To start the game, have the first player of each team run towards their teammate that is holding the crepe paper, grab one end and run back. Then team member 2 goes, then team member 3, and so on. The first team to unravel all rolls of crepe paper to successfully build a rainbow wins the prize!
