Do you want to do activities with your kids each day but you have no idea where to start? Don't worry there's lots of parents in exactly the same position, which is why I'm putting together monthly play activity schedules to make it easy for you to create a month of fun for your kids at home or in the classroom.
The March activity calendar focuses on St Patrick's Day, rainbows and Easter themed ideas for toddlers, preschoolers and school kids. The activities include a mix of art and craft, sensory, science and play ideas as well as books to read aloud during the month.
Each activity is explained in detail below, including how you can extend or adjust the activity based on your child's age. You can also download our free interactive march activity calendar pdf with links to instructions for every activity to save for future reference.
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March 2023 Play Activity Calendar
This play activity calendar includes activities that can easily be done using items from around your home {or classroom} and you can substitute items to make it suit what you have on hand. If you want to be fully prepared I've set up an Amazon supply list that includes all of the main items needed for every activity during March.
There are no activities listed for weekends as they can be used for free play/family time or to catch up on activities you may have missed during the week. Below you will find detailed explanations of each activity as well as how to modify them for children of different ages and some extension activities you can do if you're looking for additional ideas.
At the bottom of this post you'll also be able to download a copy of the interactive March play calendar PDF which includes direct clickable links to all of the activities featured in this months calendar.
Rainbow Rice
Rainbow rice is one of the most popular sensory bases and one of the cheapest to make. Follow my step by step instructions to make taste safe sensory rice with just 3 ingredients. The recipe I use is not only taste safe, but will also last for years if you store it properly. Kids can help you make the rice or you can make it ahead ready for play.
There are many ways to play with sensory rice, however the easiest way is to set up a sensory tub with the rice, scoops, spoons and a few bowls. This will give children lots of opportunities to scoop and pour, dump, sort, measure and weigh the rice. You can also add some funnels and empty cardboard tubes.
How to Catch a Rainbow {Read Aloud}
Join Freya as she tries to catch a real life rainbow in this fun picture book How to Catch a Rainbow. This book is a great way for children to learn about nature and colours and ties together the monthly theme of rainbows.
Read the story aloud in a group, read the book to your child, have your child read the book to you, or watch the story being read aloud here on YouTube. You can borrow the book from a friend or the library, or get your own copy from Amazon, Amazon AU or Book Depository.
Extension Ideas:
Make toilet paper roll binoculars. Make a pair of binoculars from two empty toilet paper rolls, some tape and a bit of string. They can also be decorated with paint sticks, crayons or stickers.
Go on a rainbow hunt. After reading the book go around the house, classroom or backyard and collect items in all the colours of the rainbow like Freya does in the book.
Rainbow Ice Cubes
Follow these instructions to make your own rainbow ice cubes and freeze them overnight before you do the activity. When you're ready to use the rainbow ice, set it up in a tray with deep enough edges that the water will be contained as the ice melts. Give the kids some warm water and spoons or pipettes to melt the ice.
This is a great sensory activity for younger kids to reinforce colours as well as temperature differences. It's also a great stem activity for older children to learn about states of matter, how fast or slow ice melts and to build fine motor skills using pipettes.
Extension Ideas:
Colour blending. Ask the kids what colours they think the individual ice pieces might make once they melt and blend together. Put two primary coloured ice cubes next to each other to watch how the secondary colours are formed as they melt.
Ice Painting. Put some of the ice cubes onto paper and move them around the sheet. The melting ice will paint onto the paper similar to watercolours. Make sure you don't wet the paper too much though as it may deteriorate.
Pot of Gold Sensory Bin
Bring the magic of the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow legend to life with this St Patrick's Day sensory bin. See how I set up our pot of gold sensory bin and how we played with it.
There are many ways kids can play with this sensory bin including finding the coins with a magnifying glass or tweezers, counting the coins into the pot and hiding the coins in the rice. Younger children will enjoy simply scooping and pouring the rice.
Skittles Rainbow Science Experiment
A fun way to make your own magic rainbow appear is with the Skittles rainbow experiment. Use the colourful candy to make a rainbow appear before your kids eyes in less than a minute. Follow my instructions for the skittles science experiment and use candy science to wow your kids. The best part is the skittles can still be eaten afterwards!
Magic shapes. See what other shapes or objects you can make with the skittles and add water to bring them to life.
St Patrick's Day Playdough Mats
Download this set of 10 free St Patrick's Day playdough mats and use them with store bought playdoh or some homemade playdough {you'll need green, yellow, black, red, orange, blue, purple and pink}. You can also use them with loose parts and pens, or laminate and use whiteboard markers or washable markers.
Rolling, manipulating, breaking and squishing playdough is a great way for younger kids to build their fine motor skills. It's also a great sensory activity to do during quiet time or group rotations at school.
Leprechaun Beard Cutting Activity
Kids can trim the leprechauns beard and practice their cutting and fine motor skills with this fun interactive leprechaun beard craft. Download the free leprechaun beard template and get the kids to colour it in. Once their masterpiece is done you can attach the leprechauns long bright orange beard ready for them to give him a trim.
If you have younger kids and you think cutting yarn may be too difficult, you could substitute it with orange paper strips or orange tissue paper to make it easier for them to cut. If you're doing this with toddlers you could laminate their leprechaun and then make a beard out of orange playdough strips and get them to trim it with playdough scissors or a playdough knife.
Walking Water Science Experiment
Walking water is such a simple yet magical way for younger children to learn about absorption and colouring mixing. Set up the walking water experiment and the kids can watch the water walk along the paper towel before their eyes to create secondary colours.
Shamrock Scrape Painting
Create this fun marbled shamrock artwork in just a few minutes using shaving cream process art. I know I probably just lost a lot of you at the mention of shaving cream, but trust me it's not as messy as it sounds.
Follow the instructions and use the free shamrock template from The Craft At Home Family to create your own special shamrocks. The best part is no two shamrocks will ever look exactly the same so this is a great classroom art activity.
Extension Idea:
Shamrock garland. Create a number of marbled shamrocks and then tie them all together with string to create a shamrock garland. Make them all green or mix it up and do different rainbow colours.
Rainbow Colour Sorting
Either collect a pile of different coloured items, or have the kids go and find items of different colours. Get the children to sort the colours into separate colours and then arrange them in rainbow order. This is a great way to reinforce colours for children who are still learning them, and an interactive way for kids to learn the order of a rainbow.
There are many different items that can be used and ways to colour sort with children of different ages and abilities. Have a look at the colour sorting activities with containers, sensory activities and fine motor tools and manipulatives we've done in the past for more ideas.
How to Catch a Leprechaun {Read Aloud}
A pesky leprechaun is on the loose causing mischief in everyone's house. With an array of different leprechaun traps set up to stop him, will he be caught or will he get away? Take notes because tomorrow you'll be making a leprechaun trap of your own.
Read the story aloud in a group, read the book to your child, have your child read the book to you, or watch the story being read aloud here on YouTube. You can borrow the book from a friend or the library, or get your own copy from Amazon, Amazon AU or Book Depository.
DIY Leprechaun Trap
Get your thinking caps on and brainstorm together to come up with the perfect DIY leprechaun trap. There are a few leprechaun trap ideas here, or you can follow the instructions to make the tissue box leprechaun trap below.
You can make a leprechaun trap out of almost any recycled container and decorate it with stickers or drawings. Don't forget to add some gold coins to try and lure the leprechaun in.
St Patrick's Day Scavenger Hunt
This is a great interactive activity to do with children on St Patrick's Day. It will require a little bit of prep work which I recommend you do the night before after the kids are in bed, or in the morning before class if you're doing this activity in a classroom.
For the final prize you will need a plastic cauldron pot and either some chocolate coins or fake play coins. You can also leave 1 or 2 coins or foam shamrocks with each clue to make it easier for younger children to find them.
To set up the scavenger hunt start by downloading the free scavenger hunt printable, print it out and cut up the clues. Decide where you're going to hide the clues and in what order you want the kids to find them. Hide all of the clues and prizes. In the morning help the children find the St Patrick's Day gold. If they can't read yet you'll have to read the clues out to them as they find them.
Chicken Playdough Tray
Now that St Patrick's Day is over we can move on to Easter themed activities. This chicken playdough invitation to play is a great way to introduce Easter.
Use some yellow or orange playdough and chicken related loose parts like feathers, eyes, nests and eggs to set up a playdough tray. Although the tray is themed, it's more like a tinker tray and children can build and play with the items however they like.
Shape Bunny Craft
Kids can learn about shapes and have fun creating with this shape bunny craft. Download the free shape bunny template and follow the instructions to assemble the bunny. Kids can choose to make either a circle, oval, love heart, triangle, rectangle, square or hexagon bunny.
If you're doing this activity with younger kids you may want to pre cut up the templates so they just have to assemble the pieces. You can also experiment using different coloured background paper or making the bunny from newspaper, glitter card or patterned craft paper.
Easter Colouring Pages
Get creative and decorate some Easter colouring pages with crayons, pencils, paint sticks or pens. Download a set of 24 free Easter coloring pages here. Colouring is a great mindfulness or quiet activity for kids and is also an excellent way for younger children to develop pre-writing skills and their pencil grip.
If the kids want to colour even more pages, I have a huge collection of over 130 free printable Easter colouring pages including egg, bunny, chick and colour by number templates.
Pete the Cat: Big Easter Adventure {Read Aloud}
The Easter bunny has left Pete the cat an important job to complete. He has to find some eggs, decorate them and hide them. How will he do it, will he get it all done?
Read the story aloud in a group, read the book to your child, have your child read the book to you, or watch the story being read aloud here on YouTube. You can borrow the book from a friend or the library, or get your own copy from Amazon, Amazon AU or Book Depository.
Extension Idea:
Paint Easter Eggs. Decorate some white foam or plastic eggs with pens, paint pens or washable paint to create decorated eggs like Pete did in the book.
Plastic Egg Painting
Use some plastic Easter eggs with washable paint to create circle paintings. This is a fun way for younger children to explore ways to paint without a paintbrush. Easter egg painting allows children to be creative with mark making and build fine motor skills as they have to grasp the egg and use pressure to create the image.
Extension Idea:
Overlapping Circle Paintings. If you have older kids get them to create overlapping circles with black paint using the Easter eggs. Then get them to paint or colour each intersection of the circles in different colours to create abstract geometric art.
Flower Easter Egg Craft
Combine art and nature with these flower Easter eggs. Go on a nature hunt in your backyard, garden or a park to collect different flowers and leaves. Use the Easter egg template from Hello Wonderful to create different coloured eggs from cardstock or paper.
Get the kids to lay out their floral designs onto the eggs until they're happy with them then glue the flowers and leaves onto the eggs. Younger children may need help with gluing. Once they're completed display the flower eggs on the wall for Easter {please note they will only last a few days before the flowers wilt and deteriorate}. If you want the eggs to stay fresh you can use craft flowers instead.
Easter Playdough Mats
Download my set of 4 free Easter playdough mats and use with playdough, loose parts or washable markers {once laminated}. Each of the mats come with a decoration prompt as an idea for how the kids can decorate the mat, including a variety of making faces, decorating and adding eggs. However, they are deliberately minimal and open ended so children can use them as they choose.
If your kids love playing with these playdough mats I also have a larger set of 10 Easter playdough mats available in my Etsy store.
Extension Idea:
Language development. While children are decorating their mats you can aid their language development by asking questions such as what colour will the chicks feathers be? How many whiskers will the bunny have? Where will you hide the eggs?
Carrot Patch Game
Get some foam carrots from the dollar store and use an empty egg carton to create this DIY carrot patch letter matching game. If you have younger children you can leave out the letter matching element and just create the carrot patch so they can plant their carrots. Putting the carrots into the egg carton patch is great for hand/eye co-ordination and fine motor skills.
I created this game when my daughter was still learning letters and was having trouble recognising a few letters and differentiating between capital and lowercase letters. You can use it for 12 different letters instead of a mix of uppercase and lowercase.
Shape/Colour/Number Carrot Patch. If your kids aren't identifying letters yet then you can use the same game for shapes, colours or numbers by writing them onto the carton and carrots instead of the letters.
Easter Small World Play. Use the carrot patch with some bunnies to create a simple Easter small world.
Sight Word Carrot Patch. If you have older children who are learning sight words then write the sight words onto the carrots and egg carton so they can match them up.
Easter Sensory Bin
Create a simple Easter sensory bin using a tray or tub, some shredded paper and Easter items. You can use any age appropriate items that aren't a potential choking hazard for mouthing children. You can also substitute the shredded paper for a taste safe sensory base such as cous cous or crushed cereal. Dollar stores and department stores are a great place to find cheap Easter play items.
Sensory play bins are a great way for children to explore textures, colours, weight, size and more. They are also great for imaginary play and language development. If your child loves this sensory bin, there's even more Easter sensory play ideas here.
Happy Easter from the Crayons {Read Aloud}
Follow along as all the crayons decorate different shapes and colours for Easter. Purple crayon is super confused why all the crayons are colouring shapes, but nobody is decorating an egg?!
Read the story aloud in a group, read the book to your child, have your child read the book to you, or watch the story being read aloud here on YouTube. You can borrow the book from a friend or the library, or get your own copy from Amazon, Amazon AU or Book Depository.
Extension ideas:
Collage egg. Cut out the different shapes mentioned in the book for the kids to decorate with different colours. Cut a large egg shape out of paper and stick all of the completed shapes onto the egg to create a decorated Easter egg just like the crayons did.
DOWNLOAD THE MARCH PLAY CALENDAR PDF HERE
Click the download now button below to download the interactive PDF file. Each image on the PDF calendar can be clicked to go directly to the instructions for the individual activity.
Please note that this activity calendar PDF is for personal or classroom use only and may not be shared, electronically uploaded or sold on any platform. If you would like to share or feature the calendar in a blog post please link back to this post directly.
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Disclosure - This post contains some affiliate links for your convenience, which means I may make a small commission at no cost to you, should you make a purchase. Please note all free printables mentioned within this post are for personal or classroom use only.
