St. Patrick's Day Activity Booklets

A couple of years ago I made a point to purchase books for St. Patrick's Day. The kiddos love this holiday, in part because of the magical feeling of wearing green (as if we're all part of a secret club!) and the whimsical mischief of leprechauns and rainbows.

A popular (and free!) resource I've been using for years is my Clever Tom and the Leprechaun Cause and Effect activity. 

Over the last few weeks I've been working on more activities for my St. Patrick's Day books. I decided to create a cover page for each book and post them as "activity booklets." Of course, the pages can be used individually, but I plan on making small booklets using the pages (all things we've done in class) as a review during our small-group reading the week of March 13. 

I love the way I can differentiate the booklets for each child, so after reading the story aloud my students can work independently on whatever skill I feel they need some review with. Here are the ones I've created so far:

The Luckiest St. Patrick's Day Ever

Tim O'Toole and the Wee Folk

The Leprechaun Who Lost His Rainbow

And then to kick the month off I'll be sending home this awesome Create a Leprechaun Trap project home for students to complete. The Book How to Catch a Leprechaun by Adam Wallace is a perfect read to introduce this. On Friday (March 17) we'll test out the traps. I created a brainstorming page in which students must plan 2 traps, create a pros/cons list for each, then determine the best way to succeed before building. Nothing like a little engineering thrown in for good measure!

A few other ideas I'm planning for March include keeping a class record of the leprechaun-themed books we read and graphing if they're good/neutral/mischievous creatures. I also plan to do a ton of writing this month (it always amazes me to see how far they come from August as far as writing goes) and since it's Reading Month our school will be participating in D.E.A.R. (Drop Everything and Read). We also have a few surprise readers coming (including a police officer and our school secretary!) which I know will thrill the kids.