St. Patrick's Day Fun

St. Patrick's Day is one of those holidays that I really like to have fun with in the classroom. I don't like to spend just one day on this holiday, but rather a full week. It is always a fun time of the year and usually a great way to get ready for Spring.

I don't go super crazy and have my students look for a leprechaun all day, but I do like to sprinkle glitter on the floor to make believe that one has been in the classroom. 

I know some of my fellow teachers have always liked having students make leprechaun traps at home and then bring them into the classroom (great STEM idea), but remembering to do this has not been something I have ever managed to accomplish. 

On St. Patrick's Day, I like to arrange my students' desks in the shape of a shamrock and lay green construction paper on the desks. I also like to have a little something special (stickers, bracelets, necklaces, bubbles, etc) on their desks so that when they walk into the classroom they get a big surprise, which of course they love. To add to the fun everyone is in green. It is a low-key festive day, if that makes sense.

As I mentioned, I like spending a full week on this holiday, which means having activities and printables for students to work on. Our writing is usually a leprechaun writing. We write about meeting a leprechaun and tell where we met him; what he looks like; how we caught him; etc. It is a fun writing idea that takes us a few days.

I read lots of St. Patrick's Day stories to my class and I make sure that one of them is a simple version of the history and symbols of St. Patrick's Day. One book I like for this is St. Patrick's Day, by Gail Gibbons. I love to have fun with other books too. Students always enjoy a good read-aloud, but they also like to listen to an audiobook on CD. We listen to some fun YouTube songs as well.

While I actually do quite a bit centered around the St. Patrick's Day theme, most of it is geared toward math. I use packets that I have created. Two of my old-time favorites are my St. Patrick's Day Word Problems and my St. Patrick's Day Roll and Cover packets.

St. Patrick's Day Word Problems

St. Patrick's Day Roll and Cover

Recently I have created a couple more packets. These are the St. Patrick's Day Adding Tens and Ones and the St. Patrick's Day Math Practice Pages packets.

St. Patrick's Day Adding Tens and Ones

St. Patrick's Day Math Practice Pages







I hope that you and your class will have a fun St. Patrick's Day and please feel free to check out any resources that you might be interested in.

The Gingerbread Man Activity Pack

The Gingerbread Man is one of those books that students have fun with. The repetitive pattern and pictures allow students to successfully read the story, especially the easier versions. Rather than just rushing through this book and only reading it once, I really like to spend time with it. This includes reading different versions of the story. It might also include the reader's theater, listening to the story on CD, and watching the story on YouTube.

I also like to provide students with different activities that work well and/or correspond to the theme of the book. I do this by using story resource packets that I have available at my TpT Store.

My Gingerbread Man Activity Pack includes a student version of the Gingerbread Man story in both color and black and white. This is used after students have heard the story a few times. After reading the student version of the story students cut the strips apart and put the story back together again. Using the familiar story is a fun way for students to practice reading.
The set also includes a comprehension page, a word search, and cards to make retell puppet sticks.

My Gingerbread Man Math Practice Pages includes 25 pages of math
practice that is geared towards kindergarten and first grade students, but may serve as a review for other grades. It includes pages for missing numbers, patterns, graphing, shapes, addition, subtraction, word problems, place value, less than/greater than, and time.



I have included the links to these resources below in case you are interested. I have also included my Gingerbread Man video and the link if you want to actually view it on YouTube.

The Gingerbread Man Activity Pack

The Gingerbread Man Math Practice Pages

The Gingerbread Man (YouTube Video)

This video is available as a PowerPoint as well. 

The Gingerbread Man Story PP