St. Patrick's Day Word Search
- CLOVER
- LEPRECHAUN
- TRINITY
- TREFOIL
- RIBBON
- PIPER
- CHARM
- PARADE
- FESTIVAL
- HORSESHOE
- VILLAGE
- DANCER
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St. Patrick's Day Word Search
Shamrocks, harps and the words that come around in March.
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St. Patrick's Day Word Search, Answer Key
- CLOVER
- LEPRECHAUN
- TRINITY
- TREFOIL
- RIBBON
- PIPER
- CHARM
- PARADE
- FESTIVAL
- HORSESHOE
- VILLAGE
- DANCER
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Four sheets, each with a different job. Every one is a two-page PDF, the puzzle, then the answer key on its own page.
St. Patrick's Day word search, large print11 × 11 · 7 words · EasyDownload PDF ↓
St. Patrick's Day word search, everyday14 × 14 · 11 words · MediumDownload PDF ↓
St. Patrick's Day word search, more words15 × 15 · 14 words · MediumDownload PDF ↓
St. Patrick's Day word search, challenge17 × 17 · 15 words · HardDownload PDF ↓Every sheet here is free to print as often as you like. If one saved you time, the tip jar is on Ko-fi.
St. Patrick’s Day is a small holiday with a strong visual vocabulary, which suits a word search better than a larger one might. Shamrock, emerald, leprechaun and blarney are specific to the day in a way that fall words are not specific to fall.
The list reaches past the shorthand. Harp, trefoil, gaelic and patron are the actual furniture of the day rather than the greeting-card version of it, so a sheet can carry a little of where the thing came from.
Leprechaun, at ten letters, is the only word on the list longer than nine; horseshoe comes next at nine, and harp is the shortest at four. The two longest words never share a sheet: leprechaun is on the large print sheet only, and horseshoe waits for the more words and challenge sheets.
It is a single afternoon in the year, so the sheets are worth printing in the week before rather than the day itself. A class that has met the words already gets more out of the day than one meeting them cold.
What blarney, trefoil and Gaelic mean on a St. Patrick's Day word search
BLARNEY means smooth, flattering talk, TREFOIL is an old name for a three-leaved plant such as clover, and GAELIC names the Celtic languages of Ireland and Scotland. TREFOIL comes from the Latin for three leaves and SHAMROCK from the Irish for little clover, so SHAMROCK, CLOVER and TREFOIL are three names for much the same small plant. Its three leaves are why it belongs to the day: the traditional story is that the saint used a shamrock to explain the TRINITY, three in one. The four-leaf clover is a separate tradition, and the rare, lucky one that LUCKY and CHARM point to.
BLARNEY takes its name from Blarney Castle near Cork, where kissing the Blarney Stone is said to give you the gift of persuasive talk. GAELIC needs a little care: in Ireland the language is usually called Irish, and Gaelic on its own is often used for Scottish Gaelic or for Gaelic games such as hurling. Both words are on the everyday sheet, with TRINITY, IRELAND, DUBLIN and CELTIC, so that is the sheet to print if the class is going to talk about where the day comes from rather than only color in shamrocks.
Which instruments are on the St. Patrick's Day word search
Three instruments are on the St. Patrick's list by name, HARP, FIDDLE and WHISTLE, and two more stand behind PIPER and DRUMMER. HARP is more than an instrument, since it is the national emblem of Ireland and appears on Irish euro coins. FIDDLE and WHISTLE are the instruments of a traditional session, and PIPER can mean a player of the bagpipes or of the Irish uilleann pipes. With DANCER, PARADE and BANNER they make up the band and the march, and most of them sit on the challenge sheet, where WHISTLE, DANCER, PIPER, DRUMMER and BANNER all appear, so a class preparing for a parade is best served by that one.
The large print sheet sits at the other end of the scale: SHAMROCK, CLOVER, EMERALD, HARP, LEPRECHAUN, RAINBOW and GOLDEN, running only across and down on an eleven-square grid. LEPRECHAUN, at ten letters, takes ten of the eleven squares in whichever row or column it lands in, which makes it the easiest word on the sheet to find and the hardest to spell, since the ch is said as a k and the ending sounds like the awn in lawn. EMERALD is the color word with a story behind it: the Emerald Isle is a poetic name for Ireland, from how green the country is.
Common questions
Why are IRELAND, DUBLIN and GAELIC in here?
IRELAND, DUBLIN and GAELIC are there because the day has somewhere it comes from, and a sheet made only of shamrocks and rainbows leaves that out. All three are on the everyday sheet, but only GAELIC carries on to the more words sheet, and none of them appears on the large print or challenge sheets.
Are the Irish words going to confuse anyone?
The Irish words should not confuse anyone, since BLARNEY, TREFOIL and GAELIC, the three that need a sentence of explanation, are none of them on the large print sheet. The more words sheet is the only one carrying all three, with BLARNEY and GAELIC also on the everyday sheet and TREFOIL on the challenge sheet, so print more words if the class will hear what each one means.
What date is St. Patrick's Day?
St. Patrick's Day is March 17 every year, the traditional date of the saint's death, and MARCH is one of the words on the more words sheet. It falls on a different weekday each year, so check whether it lands on a school day before planning the sheets around it.
Want to know when new printables go up?
New printables when they go up, mostly seasonal, a few times a year.