Free Printable Leprechaun Hunt Activity

This free printable leprechaun hunt is perfect for adding a little magic to St. Patrick’s Day! Send kids around the house trying to find all of these leprechaun related items or hide these at a party, break into teams, and see which team can find them first! Either way, this leprechaun scavenger hunt will be the hit of any St. Patrick’s Day celebration!

Leprechaun Hunt Ideas for St. Patrick’s Day

My husband is part Irish, so we like to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day in a big way at our house. Last year we threw a fun St. Patrick’s Day party (with these cute St. Patrick’s Day printables) and played these fun St. Patrick’s Day games with my family! Never tried a cabbage crawl? This is totally your year!

My son is obsessed with all sorts of games so this year I thought it’d be fun to do a combination of various leprechaun games to celebrate – starting with this lucky leprechaun hunt and followed up by this St. Patrick’s Day bingo!

Leprechaun Scavenger Hunt

We’ve done both a traditional St. Patrick’s Day scavenger hunt and this leprechaun hunt on St. Patrick’s Day. They’re both fun, just a bit different. The first is more of a leprechaun treasure hunt where you give the first clue to the players and they follow it to find the little leprechaun at the end.

This leprechaun hunt is designed to be one where you give each player a card, and they have to find the items on the list. In the realm of scavenger hunt ideas, it’s one of the find these items types!

The idea is that whoever is playing will need to find each of the items on the list in your house (or wherever you’re doing the hunt). You can either have them take a picture, put it in a bag, or just have them cross it off as they find it.

What’s on the Leprechaun hunt cards?

I tried to make all of the items on the cards St. Patrick’s Day themed AND things that you could either find around your house already or things that you (as the person in charge) could hide around the house pretty easily, like shamrocks.

Here’s the full list of what is included on the cards along with a few details about each:

• Something green – this could be pretty much anything green!
• A gold coin – I recommended putting these in various places around the house for them to find
• Something Irish – if you’re like us and enjoy Kerrygold butter, this would be an easy one. But any of the other things you hide (shamrock, leprechaun, etc.) would work too
• Something lucky – really could be anything!
• Leprechaun food – again, could be a lot of things – Lucky Charms, rainbow colored food, green food, chocolate gold coins
• Black shoes
• A hat
• Rainbow – this could be anything rainbow colored or you could even get really fun and make some of these rainbow donuts or rainbow cake balls for them to find!
• Four leaf clover – you’re going to want to put these around the house. Here are some small ones on coins you could pick up to include for the hunt or you could just print some out!
• Striped socks – if you’re like me, you probably have these already!

How to do a leprechaun scavenger hunt

If you’re doing this with multiple people, you’ll follow the instructions below for each person or group playing.

1. Make sure all of the items on the list are findable in your space – you may have to put them out if you don’t already have them around.
2. Print out one leprechaun hunt for each player.
3. Give each person a leprechaun hunt, a pen, and a bag (optional – if you want them to actually collect the items to bring back).
4. When you say go, they have to go and find the leprechaun items on the card!

Whoever finds all of the items wins a special surprise like Lucky Charms cookies! Or these chocolate gold coins. Or really anything St. Patrick’s Day themed!

Additional Rules

• The card itself cannot be used for any of the items. It includes pretty much everything on the card, so it can’t be used.
• They can’t break anything, destroy anything, or make a mess trying to find things. If they do, they must clean it up before moving onto the next item on the list.
• Creativity is encouraged! Don’t tell them to use their imagination when it comes to things but if they do, it’s totally okay. For example, a bucket could be a hat!
• If it’s something too big to bring back, take a picture! Try to have adults around with cameras that can be used for pictures or this is a great excuse to use one of these automatic print Instax cameras!

Just a few rules to bring up before you let everyone go free for all with the hunt!

First, the card itself cannot be used for any of the items. It includes pretty much everything on the card, so it can’t be used.

They can’t break anything, destroy anything, or make a mess trying to find things. If they do, they must clean it up before moving onto the next item on the list.

If it’s something too big to bring back, take a picture! Try to have adults around with cameras that can be used for pictures or this is a great excuse to use one of these automatic print Instax cameras!

If everyone brings back a full card, you can either give the prize to the first person to complete it, a prize to everyone who completes it, or put all of the cards in a bag and pick one at random to choose the winner!

More Leprechaun Hunt Ideas

Mix it up and try one of these alternatives instead of just the free for all hunt idea!

1. Try a relay. Break the group into teams and give each team one card. Have someone go find one item and come back then pass the card onto the next person who has to find another item on the list. Kind of like this Lucky Charms relay game!
2. Make it a group effort. Give a group one card and let them try to find things together – you could even turn it into a photo scavenger hunt and have the group take pictures with the items!
3. Turn it into an adult version by 1) not placing items out around the house – make them think outside the box and search a bit harder. And two, only one person wins – first person to find all the items.
4. Add hidden leprechauns! If you’re doing this all together, hide little mini leprechauns throughout the space and if anyone finds one on the hunt, they get a bonus surprise!

Prizes when they find the leprechaun items

Games aren’t the same without prizes – no matter how small! I mentioned the cookies as an option above but if you want to get a little more creative, here are some other fun St. Patrick’s Day prize ideas! I’ve included both big and small prizes depending on what type of game you’re playing.

• Lucky You Treat Bag
• Lucky Charm Bracelet
• St Patrick’s Day socks
• Lucky Me Spoons
• How to Catch a Leprechaun book
• Shamrock soaps
• Shamrock slime
• Leprechaun Barf (kids will love this!)
• Pot of gold with little treats inside

More St. Patrick’s Day Games

If you want even more fun things to do with this leprechaun hunt (or even to do next year), try out these:

• St. Patrick’s Day Trivia – with trivia questions for kids and adults, this is a fun one for everyone!
• Roll a rainbow dice game – see who can roll a rainbow first with this fun and easy dice game!
• St. Patrick’s Day Would You Rather – tons of would you rather questions with an Irish twist!
• St. Patrick’s Day Charades – how many of these leprechaun inspired words can you guess?
• Guess the rainbow game – can you guess how many of each color are in a bag of candy? Great for kids!

want more fun St. Patrick’s Day Games?

GET our games bundle!

Download the Printable Game

To get the free printable lucky leprechaun hunt, fill in your first name and email in the pink form below to get the printable.

If you do not see the form below, click here to get to it.

If you’d prefer to not provide your email address, you can get a copy in my shop.

The PDF will include:

• Leprechaun scavenger hunt cards – three to a page

I recommend printing on white card stock and laminating if you want to use again year after year. Or just throw the cards away when you’re done!