7 St. Patrick’s Day Books for Preschoolers to Love

Ready to find some great St. Patrick’s Day books for preschoolers? Preschool kiddos love the idea of mischievous leprechauns, gold, and rainbows, making it an extra fun theme for your March sessions.

Including a fun Saint Patty’s Day book in plans for your preschool speech therapy is a wonderful way to introduce this Irish-themed holiday with some new vocabulary and of course, an emphasis on the color green!

Check out this list of children’s books about St. Patrick’s Day that your little ones will love.

I’ve included links to St. Patrick’s Day read-alouds on YouTube so you can check them out for yourself.

1. The Night Before St. Patrick’s Day by Natasha Wing is perfect for ages 3-6.

This charming story has the familiar cadence of The Night Before Christmas. Point out the rhyming words and get in plenty of verb practice in this charming story about Tim and Maureen. Do you think they’ll catch the leprechaun?

Goals to target with The Night Before St. Patrick’s Day:

• What doing? questions
• What questions: What are the children dreaming about?
• How questions. How do you think each trap works?How did the leprechaun trick the children?
• Who questions: Who made the traps? Who played the bagpipes? Who made a mess?
• Rhyming words
• Vocabulary: Leprechaun, charms, bagpipes, stare, vanish, wriggling, cobbler, trinket

2. The Luckiest St. Patrick’s Day Ever by Teddy Slater is for preschool to 3rd graders.

You’ll talk about all the St. Patrick’s Day vocabulary as you read this delightful rhyming book. Fun illustrations make this one a keeper for PK-1^st grade. Pick a few vocabulary words from the book and explore them further. Here’s a list:

• Leprechaun
• Wee
• Shillelagh
• Pot of gold
• Shamrock
• Fife
• Jig
• Mulligan stew
• Cabbage
• Lassies
• Ladies
• Irish

3. How to Catch a Leprechaun by Adam Wallace will capture the imagination of your 3-6-year-olds.

This tricky Leprechaun thinks he’s too smart to be caught in all the Leprechaun traps that people have set, for him, so he plays a few tricks, including turning the toilet bowl green! The text rhymes and there is plenty to talk about. Ask WH questions as you explore the fun illustrations. What a mess the leprechaun makes!

What kind of trap do you think you would try? What would you need to build your trap?

Goals to target with How to Catch a Leprechaun:

• How questions: How did they try to trap him?
• What happened questions: What happened instead?
• Why questions: Why do children want to trap a leprechaun?
• Past tense: What did the Leprechaun do?
• Emotions: how do the people on this page feel about what the leprechaun did?
• Rhyming words
• Vocabulary: Leprechaun, jig, engineer, stroll, brilliant

4. Green Shamrocks by Eve Bunting

Rabbit grows a pot of green shamrocks for St. Patrick’s Day, but it mysteriously disappears! Who has it? He asks all the animals, and it turns out that the goat has it. Why did Rabbit grow a pot of shamrocks? This story is sound-loaded with initial ‘sh” for fun articulation practice.

Goals to target with Green Shamrocks:

• Initial sh articulation, gr blend (green)
• What happened questions
• Who questions
• Vocabulary: shamrocks, sowed, perched
• Past tense verbs: watered, clapped, dreamed, and more
• Inference: Why did Goat take the shamrocks?

5. Lucky Tucker by Leslie McGuirk

This simple story is perfect for your littlest students. Tucker the dog has had a run of bad luck lately and decides to roll in a patch of shamrocks in the hopes that some luck will rub off on him. This book is sound-loaded with initial /l/  (luck, lucky, leprechaun, and licking are repeated.

Goals to target with Lucky Tucker:

• Articulation of initial /l/, medial /k/ (Tucker) and final “er”
• What happened?
• What did Tucker the dog do?
• Why? Why was Tucker lucky?

6. The Story of the Leprechaun by Katherine Tegen

The author weaves plenty of Irish folklore in this story. The Story of the Leprechaun tells how the leprechaun earned all his gold making and selling wonderful shoes.

A greedy man saw the gold and decided to catch the leprechaun so he would be granted three wishes. But the leprechaun outsmarted the man and found a much better place to keep his gold!

Goals to target with The Story of the Leprechaun:

• Describing: describe the scenes in this beautifully illustrated book
• Where questions: Where did the leprechaun hide his gold?
• How questions: How did the leprechaun trick the man?
• Why questions: Why did the leprechaun hide his gold at the end of the rainbow?
• Vocabulary: Leprechaun, cobbled, satin, miser, wealth

7. The Littlest Leprechaun by Brandi Dougherty is about a little Leprechaun who thinks he is just too small to do anything important.

This book is great for working on initial /l/ as it repeats Liam’s name and the word little throughout. Liam tries to help his family do their important jobs, but something always goes wrong.

Goals you can cover with The Littlest Leprechaun:

• Articulation of Initial /l/
• What happened? questions
• Why questions about Liam’s mishaps
• Where questions. Where did each family member work?
• Who questions. Who did each job?
• How questions. How did Liam save the unicorn?
• Vocabulary: important, leprechaun, cobbler, foundry, unicorn, peered, and more.

There you have it!

After you’ve read your favorite St. Patrick’s Day books for preschoolers, add a couple more activities.

Preschoolers have shorter attention spans than our bigger kids and do best when each activity in a session is no more than 10-15 minutes long. So fill the rest of your session with a few more fun St. Patrick’s Day activities to keep interest and attention high.

If your littles have been sitting to listen to the book, those wiggly little ones probably are ready to move. So…

Switch things up with these St. Patrick’s Day movement breaks

Those little bodies have a hard time sitting for long periods, so get them up and moving with these fun videos:

The Leprechauns are Marching by The Kiboomers

Dance, Dance Leprechauns Dance by The Kiboomers

St. Patrick’s Day Dance and Freeze! by Jack Hartmann

Play this free open-ended St. Patrick’s Day game

Open-ended games are great because you can use them across your caseload with a variety of ages and learners. I created this lucky little subscriber-only St. Patrick’s Day board game and I’d love to send it to you. get this Lucky Leprechaun game when you sign up for my newsletter here.

Need to plan St. Patrick’s Day activities for your older students?

My number one recommendation is to play my St. Patrick’s Day Bingo Riddles game. This is not your ordinary bingo game. You can easily use it to cover sessions for a range of ages, learners, and goals making planning super quick and simple across your caseload.

Your students will love solving the rhyming riddles as they play, and you’ll target inference, vocabulary, rhyme, and more as you play. It’s even easy to sneak in articulation practice – making it perfect for your mixed groups.

Check it out right here in my shop or on Teachers pay Teachers.

I hope you’ve found a few new St. Patrick’s Day books for preschoolers perfect for your children.

I love rounding up book and activity ideas for your literacy-based speech therapy sessions and preschool classrooms, and you’ll find many more on my blog. Happy St. Patrick’s Day!