This fun find the leprechaun hunt will have kids (or adults) hoping to get lucky and find one of the many leprechauns hidden around the house.
We’ve been doing this activity for years with different characters like our Easter bunny hunt and reindeer hunt and it’s always a huge hit with the kids! Since leprechauns are sneaky characters, hiding them around the house is a really fun way to make the holiday a little more magical!
It feels like the past few years my family has been on spring break during St. Patrick’s Day, so it’s been a little trickier to play some of the St. Patrick’s Day games we would at home even simple things like our St. Patrick’s Day scavenger hunt.
But this find the leprechaun hunt has become one of our new traditions because we can find these little leprechauns anywhere we go! Leprechauns frequent hotels, Airbnb’s, and even the car in our world!
There are three different ways that you can use these leprechauns or honestly you can just cut out the printable leprechauns and use them however you want!
Find the Leprechaun Hunt Supplies
I mentioned it already but one of the reasons I love this printable St. Patrick’s Day activity is because you really just need to print the leprechauns, get some prizes, and play. The supplies are pretty minimal!
Supply notes
- Leprechaun hunt cards – you can download these down at the bottom of this blog post. You’ll only need these if you’re doing the card version of the hunt; if you’re doing the actual leprechaun version of the game (where you’re hiding a physical leprechaun), you won’t need the cards.
- Green bags or pots of gold – the idea behind this game is that you hide leprechaun cards and people win a prize that has the same matching card. I love to go with themed bags, like these green gift bags or these pot of gold bags are super fun!
- Leprechaun – if you’re doing the second version of this game, you’ll need some sort of actual physical leprechaun rather than the cards. I recommend making it something fun like this leprechaun plush!
How to play Find the Leprechaun
There are three completely different versions of this game that include the same concept of finding a leprechaun and winning a prize (similar to my turkey hunt).
Choose which of the three versions makes the most sense for your group and go with that one! The first two versions are more of an actual activity that you would set up, play, and be done with and probably work better for St. Patrick’s Day but if you’re hosting a St. Patrick’s Day party – the third version would be great to play all night long!
Version 1: Card Matching
For this version, you’ll need to first print and cut out two sets of the leprechaun cards so you have two of each card (this is important because you’ll be matching the cards).
Attach one of each of the cards to the green bags or pot of gold that you put prizes in. I recommend doing something where the players can’t tell what’s inside so they’re just looking for a leprechaun, not a specific one.
Tip!
If you have more people coming than there are different leprechauns, just print out another set (plus a matching set) and hide enough for everyone to find one!
Then comes the fun part, or at least the part I think is fun – take the matching cards and hide them somewhere. You can do this inside, outside, wherever you want.
Hide them as hard as makes sense for the people finding them, but I do recommend hiding them a bit harder so that this isn’t a done in two seconds kind of activity.
When you say go, players search the area looking for a leprechaun card. Once they find one, they can come back and turn it in for the matching prize bag.
Mix it up!
If you don’t want people to get random prizes based on the leprechauns they find, we’ve also done this where we just put a bunches of prizes on a table and when they find a leprechaun, they come choose a prize like we do with St. Patrick’s Day bingo! This works great, especially with kids who may want to choose what they get.
You could even just do enough leprechauns for everyone to have 2-3 prizes to make it last longer!
Find the Leprechaun Version #2: Scavenger Hunt Style
For this second version, you’ll want to print and cut out one set of the leprechaun cards.
Then you’ll also want to print out a sheet of the leprechaun cards, but don’t cut them, for each person playing. So you’ll have one set of cut out cards and one sheet per person for everyone playing.
Hide the cut out leprechaun cards wherever you want (easier is fine because they’ll have a lot to find) all over a house, yard, or both.
To play this game, you’ll give anyone playing one of the printed out leprechaun hunt sheets. When you say go, players have to race around to find all of the leprechauns on the sheet.
As they find the leprechauns, they should write down on their paper where it was hidden (for older kids/teens) or just cross it off for youngers. Or if you’d rather, you can also write a letter or a word on the back the hidden cards that they can then write on their scavenger hunt.
When they find the location of all of the leprechauns, they can come back and turn their card in for a prize of some sort. I like to do little pot of golds filled with gold coins or rainbow candies!
Tip!
The printable PDF comes with both square and circle leprechaun hunt pages. If you’re doing this with different age groups, you can assign different shapes to different ages. For example, 5 and under can find circle leprechauns and 6+ have to find square leprechauns. Or whatever your age breakdown is.
Version #3: Everyone Hides the Leprechaun
Okay so this last version is different than the first two but it’s still a find the leprechaun hunt, so I wanted to include it in this post!
Hide a physical leprechaun somewhere in your house or yard.
And come up with a set of prizes – I recommend keeping them smallish or if you go big, just make sure you set a limit to the number of times the leprechaun can be found. Or hide them in bags like we did with our brown paper bags!
When people come over to your house, explain that there’s going to be an on-going leprechaun hunt throughout the party. Then explain that if someone finds the leprechaun (show everyone a picture during your intro), they can turn it in for a prize.
Now here’s the most fun part of this activity – once the first person has found the leprechaun you hid, they will show it to you to win their prize, and then they go and hide the leprechaun around the house for a second round of fun. They can hide it as easy or as difficult as they want – that’s part of the fun of the hunt, but I recommend making sure no one is watching them hide it to keep it fun!
You could even have some sort of prize for the person who has the most clever hiding spot so people actually try hiding it!
Keep finding, winning prizes, and rehiding the leprechaun until you run out of prizes and the game is over.
This one is a great one to play throughout the day rather than just saying go and search for five minutes and be done – the leprechaun just keeps getting hidden and rehidden all day long.
Helpful Tips
Laminate the leprechaun hunt cards so that you can reuse them year after year. If you’re doing the scavenger hunt version of this, laminate the scavenger hunt cards and have people use dry erase markers to mark them off and write notes. Then just erase, store away with other St. Patrick’s Day activities for use next year.
Have people wait to open their bags until everyone has found a leprechaun so that people don’t see what’s in them and decide I don’t want to do this for that prize – or better yet, use prizes you know people will want to search for!
Do two sets of leprechaun cards if you’re doing this with multiple ages – one set that are easier for kids to find and one set that’s more challenging. You can just indicate on the cards using a star or number system or use the round vs square leprechauns.
Leprechaun Prize ideas
If you need some fun leprechaun themed prizes, I’ve included a list below of things that are either directly St. Patrick’s Day related or related enough people will get it! Or you can always just go with rainbow candies like Skittles or Airheads!
- Shamrock fidget spinner (this is so fun!)
- Rainbow purse (so cute!)
- Rainbow scratch paper (my boys love this!)
More St. Patrick’s Day Activities
If you need other fun St. Patrick’s Day activities for kids, these are some of our other favorites!
- St. Patrick’s Day scavenger hunt – kids can follow silly leprechaun themed clues to find a surprise at the end! Or try this leprechaun hunt where they have to find things you’d find on a leprechaun!
- St. Patrick’s Day would you rather questions – all sorts of silly questions with a St. Patrick’s Day theme!
- Rainbow donuts – making these is a fun activity everyone can do together!
- Leprechaun coloring sheet – these would be perfect for kids to work on after they finish finding the leprechaun!
- Lucky dice game – see who can keep the green coins to win!
Download the Find the Leprechaun Hunt
Enter your first name and email address in the form below to get the printable PDF.
You will receive a link to download the PDF to your email within minutes.
If you would prefer to not provide your email, you can purchase a copy in my shop here.
If you do not see the form, click here to get to it.
If you do not see the email immediately after you fill out the form, make sure to check your promotions, spam, and junk folders!
As a reminder, the downloadable PDF will include:
- Instructions
- One sheet of circle shaped leprechauns (shown in the photo below)
- One sheet of square shaped leprechauns (shown in the pictures in this post)
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