I have said this before, but I used to be the teacher that never stopped to have fun teaching lessons for different seasons or holidays. I always felt like it took away from what the focus was and I just didn’t have time for that. Don’t get me wrong, I still worked hard to make learning fun but I avoided holiday related activities at all costs. During a team meeting one year I voiced my concern and one of my teammates mentioned how those were the only activities he remembered doing in school. I reflected on my own thoughts and realized it may be another tool I could use to engage my students, especially those that were hard to get hooked. I started by creating activities that still fit into my academic lessons (either new skills or review) and realized that connecting lessons to seasons and holidays were game changers!
What does St. Patrick's Day look like in my classroom? Well we have loads of fun and learn the entire time. Win-win! First, no-one is allowed to pinch another student for not wearing green. I make this very clear prior to our fun filled day! For the fun, I start with an engaging writing project and we talk about how hard work is what makes us lucky! Then we do a enjoyable reading assignment about "The Luck of the Irish". I also do some finding and citing text evidence activities with the St. Patrick's Day reading practice because this I super important for upper elementary. I have even adapted some of the activities for primary grades now that I work with grades k-2 too! I created some entertaining reading graphic organizers, math color by code activities, and a poem. For math we do task cards, and rainbow factoring of numbers. Some years I have had students make graphs using their lucky charm marshmallows or find the fraction of each. It all really depends on what I want to do with the activity. It is even a great time to do skittle rainbow fractions! Just give each student a small bag of skittles and have them write the fraction for each color of skittles. Younger grades can sort and count the number for each color of skittles or Lucky charm marshmallow too! My favorite part of the day is taking all of the work from the day and creating a bulletin board to showcase our fun learning experiences.
I like to add some fun snacks into holidays so we do some green Punch and Lucky Charms (not mixed though...yuck!) Even just eating the skittles we use for math are a fun addition to any day.
What are a few other activities and topics my students have enjoyed during the month of March? March Madness, Women's in History, and Spring Break are three other topics! There are activities for every grade so scroll through them and plan to have some fun for your lucky little learners!
A little early St. Patrick's Day fun with my nieces!
I watched my nieces for the weekend so we had some St. Patrick's Day fun. They loved all of the literacy activities we "played". We did a sight word hunt where I hid them around the room and they had to find them and then read them. After the 3rd time (and they begged to play it over and over) the 6 year old knew all the words. If your child has their own word list you can easily add their words to the coins with the editable autofill document. We worked on words that end in a y and put them in groups by the /e/ sound and the /I/. Then they wrote about March. We added some fun by drawing rainbows, eating lucky charms, and wearing our St. Patrick's Day unicorn shirts! I love using the same resources I use at school at home too! How could you use these items at home?
St. Patrick's Day Intermediate Activities St. Patrick's Day Primary Activities
Rainbow Fraction Task Cards and Exit Tickets Primary Color by Code Activities
St. Patrick's Day Citing Text Evidence St. Patrick's Day Finding Text Evidence Primary
St. Patrick's Day Literacy Centers St. Patrick's Day Poem & Phonics Lessons
Spring Break Paired Passages 4th-5th Spring Break Paired Passages 3rd Grade
Women in History Citing Text Evidence Women In History Finding Text Evidence Primary
March Madness Citing Text Evidence March Madness Finding Text Evidence Primary
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