March is full of excitement for preschoolers. With the traditions of St. Patrick’s Day and the arrival of spring there is so much to explore. Personally spring is one of my favorite times of year with preschoolers. Their curiosity and enthusiasm about the changes around them are contagious.
Here you’ll find tons of March preschool activities. Some are related to preschool St. Patrick’s Day activites, some are spring activities for preschoolers, and still others are related to nonseasonal themes when you need a bit of a break from all the holiday fun.
There’s an idea for each weekday during the month, and a few bonus ideas along the way!
GET STARTED WITH 5 FREE SPRING PRINTABLES
The free printable kids’ activity calendar is full of fun things to do with kids at home or in the classroom. Use it yourself, or send a copy to parents so they have a little inspiration for hands-on fun and learning.
Read over the brief descriptions of the March activities below. Then get your own free printable March activity calendar, and you’ll have a full month of activity ideas at your fingertips. The free resource includes links to each post so you can click through online for more information, and you can also print it out to use as a quick reference.
Take a Quick Peak at the March Activity Calendar
We’re also always creating new activity ideas, and I know you want to stay up to date on those was well. In addition to an introduction to the activities originally included in the free printable calendar, I also add new activities we create related to each theme so you’ll have more options to choose from. Those are listed below each week’s original activity suggestions but are not reflected in the free printable calendar.
For some themes we have full theme planning guides and printable lesson plans. If those are available for a particular theme, there are also links to those resources included with the related weekly theme.
March Preschool Activity Themes
For our March preschool activities we’re exploring the following topics:
Week 1: Rainbows
Week 2: St. Patrick’s Day
Week 3: Spring
Week 4: Worms
Note: The free printable does not include dates. Simply pick and choose which theme you want to do for each week in March, and change the order as necessary.
Week 1: Rainbows
LOW-PREP IDEAS…
- EAT A RAINBOW OF FOODS: See if you can eat a rainbow of foods throughout the day. Not only will you be working on color recognition. You’ll also be encouraging your little one to make healthy choices and maybe even try new things.
- GO ON A RAINBOW HUNT: There are a few ways to do this. (1) Look for the colors of the rainbow individually in order. So find something red, then something orange and so on. You could even collect small objects for each color and make your own rainbow of toys. (2) You can also look for rainbows throughout the week…on clothes, in stores, on toys and such. You’d be surprised how many you’ll find when you are looking.
- MAKE A RAINBOW: Head outdoors on a sunny day. Grab the hose, and see if you can spray it and see a rainbow. Seize the opportunity to get wet and play a little too!
Rainbow Theme Activities from the Free Printable March Activity Calendar
Racing Rainbow Painting – Ramps, race cars, rainbows…and paint! That was our recipe for a morning full of hands-on play and learning. And it was definitely a whole lot of fun!
Rainbow Fine Motor Matching – Matching games are an easy way to help kids learn color words. We used this quick rainbow color word matching activity to help with color word recognition. It’s also great for fine motor practice, and it can easily be modified for younger kids who want to play by using colored dots on the clothespins instead of words. The compact size of the activity would make it a great busy bag for the home or classroom.
Rainbow Streamers – You know those crafts that end in hours of giggles and free play? They’re the best, right?! Well this rainbow and bits of gold streamer is one of them. We use ours for singing and dancing, outdoor play, and even making “music.”
Magnetic Letter Rainbow – We have a massive bin of magnetic letters we use for learning and play. For this activity I set up a simple invitation to create a rainbow, and it inspired so much play and collaborative work!
Rolling Rainbow Art – Earlier this week we set up a ramp and used our cars and trucks for some fun racing rainbow painting. Here we’re using the same concept to try some more process art. This time we use a rainbow of balls with different textures and sizes to roll down our ramps and paint a rainbow.
Additional Resources
Rainbow Theme Lesson Plans
Get a full week of rainbow theme lesson plans and activity ideas.
Rainbow theme lesson plans also available for home preschool.
Week 2: St. Patrick’s Day
LOW-PREP IDEAS…
- HAVE A GREEN DAY: Wear green. Find some fun green foods to eat. Go on a green scavenger hunt in your home and see how many green toys you can collect…count them to add in a little math!
- DESIGN A LEPRECHAUN TRAP: After reading a bit about the legend of leprechauns decide on some materials to use to build a leprechaun trap. Legos, blocks, and recycled materials work great for this!
- MAKE A RAINBOW: Get as crafty as you’d like with this. You might use paints and have your child paint a rainbow and a pot of gold. Or you could grab some sidewalk chalk a create a beautiful rainbow outdoors.
St. Patricks’s Day Activities from the Free Printable March Activity Calendar
St. Patrick’s Day Play Dough – Mix up a batch of sparkly green play dough (or just toss some glitter into storebought green Play-Doh if you prefer). Then gather some rainbow and gold manipulatives for this St. Patrick’s Day play dough invitation.
St. Patrick’s Day Roll and Color Math – This free printable St. Patrick’s Day Roll and Color activity can be used as a game to practice identifying numbers one more than the numbers five through ten.
St. Patrick’s Day Sensory Bin – We used this sensory bin for exploring, language development, transferring and pouring, counting, sorting, patterning and more.
ABC Gold Scavenger Hunt – Do your kids love scavenger hunts? Mine will do them all.day.long!
Skittles Rainbow Science – Pose this simple question to your little ones, “What do you think will happen to the water when we add Skittles to it?” Then grab your Skittles and dive into a simple investigation.
Additional Resources
St. Patrick’s Day Theme Planning Guide
Healthy St. Patrick’s Day Snacks for Kids
St. Patrick’s Day Play Dough Activities
St. Patrick’s Day Preschool Lesson Plans
Get a full week of St. Patrick’s Day lesson plans and activity ideas.
Week 3: Spring
LOW-PREP IDEAS…
- LOOK FOR SIGNS OF SPRING: Go on a nature walk in your neighborhood or at a local park. See if you can spot signs of spring in your area.
- MAKE A HABITAT FOR A SPECIAL GUEST: Spring means tons of bugs are even more visible than usual. Make a home for one to observe and learn about in the coming weeks. Some of our favorite low maintenance pets from our nature walks are roly polies, snails, and worms.
- PLANT SOME SEEDS: Plant something. Anything! See what happens.
Spring Activities from the Free Printable March Activity Calendar
Spring Tree Math – This spring tree math game is perfect for preschool and kindergarten. Along the way kids can practice counting, adding, or subtracting. Add in your favorite fine motor tools for some extra fine motor practice as well.
Gardening Sensory Bin – Make a separate gardening sensory bin that is just for play! That way we can observe the much slower growth in our actual garden, but still have a space to dig into for play and exploration each day.
Spring Tree Play Dough – Use the beautiful trees blooming in your area to give kids some wonderful background knowledge. Then dive into this play dough invitation.
Puddle Jumping Sight Word Play – Sight word puddle jumping is perfect for a rainy day activity if you choose to do this inside, or you can set it up outside like we did.
Make a Roly Poly Habitat – Make an easy roly-poly habitat and learn more about these little bugs!
Additional Resources
Spring Preschool Lesson Plans
Get a full week of spring lesson plans and activity ideas.
Week 4: Worms
LOW-PREP IDEAS…
- GO DIGGING FOR WORMS: Grab some shovels and a bucket and go digging. See if you can find some real worms out in their natural habitat.
- MAKE “WORM” PAINTINGS: Use a few pieces of long cooked pasta and paint. Have kids wiggle the paint covered pasta and drag it along paper to make worm paintings.
- MAKE A GUMMY WORM SNACK: Layer chocolate pudding, crumbled Oreo cookies, and some gummy worms for a fun worm theme snack .
Worm Activities from the Free Printable March Activity Calendar
Counting Worms Math Sensory Bin – Set up a simple sensory bin. Then after a bit of free play introduce our free printable number cube and jumbo tweezers. This adds a bit of fine motor practice while also working on number recognition and one-to-one correspondence.
Wiggly Worm Sensory Play – This one is not for the faint of heart, but it is DEFINITELY worth it.
Worm Play Dough Invitation – Keep those plastic fishing worms handy. Today we’re going to use them for a worm theme play dough invitation.
Inchworm ABC Game – This activity can be set up to practice letters, sight words, numbers, shapes…whatever you want to focus on with your child. It’s like a mini version of hide and seek. If you have more than one child it’s also a fun way to get them working together.
Hungry Worm Fine Motor Play -Help the hungry button worm eat the apples in this felt lacing activity.
Worm Theme Preschool Lesson Plans
Get the worm theme preschool lesson plans.
Worm theme lesson plans also available for home preschool.
Get the Free Printable March Activity Calendar
Note: Updated version is slightly different from the one pictured here. It includes four weeks for March and does not have dates listed so that it can be used again and again from year to year.
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