Kids love Leprechauns, pots of gold, and rainbows. Take advantage of elementary student’s natural interest to build a variety of writing activities in you classroom.
Once you have introduced and discussed the various beliefs and how people traditionally celebrate St Patrick’s Day, it is time to involve students in writing activities that engage the imagination and encourage creativity.
K-2 (Lower Elementary) Writing Activities
Shamrock Alphabet: Cut out small shamrocks and write one letter on each. Provide students with shamrock alphabet sets to use for creating words. Provide students with several pots of gold (cut outs) to use as wild cards when a duplicate letters are needed in a word. Laminating the sets prior to cutting will preserve them for future years.
Shamrock Word Cards: Write sight words, vocabulary words, spelling words, or other words that your students can read on medium sized shamrocks. Provide students with sentence strips and challenge them to write sentences with the shamrocks. Once the sentences are written, glue them to the sentence strip and display on the bulletin board. If you include words associated with St. Patrick’s Day, students can write sentences about St. Patrick’s Day.
Cloze Activity: Create a large cloze story on chart paper and ask volunteers to fill in the blanks with their shamrocks. Providing a few blank shamrocks allows students to be creative and add new words you might not have thought of.
Wish Book: Create a shape book of a Pot of Gold and a Rainbow. Add the Title “I Wish”. For the youngest students, you can add pages that say, “I wish I had a _____.” “I wish I were a ______.” “I wish I could see a _____.” “I wish I knew how to _____” Students can then fill in the blank to complete the book. You may want to provide an area for younger students to draw a picture of their wish. This makes a great take-home book to share with parents.
Older children can write a sentence or two for each prompt.
Grades 3-5 Writing Activities
Shamrock Paragraphs: Older elementary students will enjoy writing with Shamrocks, but you can add a twist. Not only can you use shamrocks for vocabulary and spelling words, you can use rainbows or gold coins for a specific part of speech. Try adding a handful of gold coins with adjectives printed on them. Make sure you have blank coins available for students to add their own words. Challenge them to write sentences and paragraphs that include both shamrocks and gold coins. With a little thought and planning, you can use a variety of symbols (rainbows, leprechauns) for whatever part of speech you want to emphasize. This will provide your students with writing practice, a visual representation of how the parts of speech work in a sentence and provide a fun activity. Display the results in a prominent spot in your room as a visual reminder of the proper use of parts of speech.
Wish Book: Elementary students are filled with dreams and wishes. Students in grades 3-5 can create a wish book similar to the k-2 version. Use the same prompts, or create some of your own, and require students to write one or two paragraphs on each page. You may wish to have students write a rough draft on separate paper and write the final draft in their book.
Writing Prompts:
#1 It is St. Patrick’s Day and a Leprechaun visits your school. He is carrying a large sack filled with magical items. He opens the bag and gives you a magical item. What is it and what can it do? Tell what happens when you use it.
#2 On the way to school you see a rainbow. When you touch it, you discover that it is solid. You break of a tiny piece and put in your pocket. Suddenly, you find yourself in a magical world where you can do anything you want. Describe this world and tell what you do there.
Even the most reluctant learners will get involved if the activity is fun and engaging. Providing elementary students with writing prompts and activities about St. Patrick’s Day using shamrocks, pots of gold, and rainbows is a great way to activate the imagination and encourage creativity
