Ireland and St. Patrick's Day: Free Resources, Crafts, Books, and Free Activities

March is not only the month when we celebrate St. Patrick's Day but it's also Irish-American Heritage Month. Since 1991 Presidents have recognized March as the month to recognize the contributions of Irish Americans and their descendants who have played key roles in the foundation of our history. Did you know that there were 9 Irish Americans that signed the Declaration of Independence. I hope you will take some time to celebrate their contributions, too. To see some famous Irish Americans just click HERE.

I've put together some great resources for St. Patrick's Day and always like to start with great books. I have to say that my favorite book is "Jamie O'Rourke and the Big Potato". If you click on the picture below you will see a great list to chose from.

Of course there is always Scholastic that has all your st. Patrick's Day need that you can access by clicking on the picture below. There are lots of materials for all elementary grades to be found.

For those of you looking for some great crafts to make with your students, games and history about St. Patrick's Day and fun facts, you should visit Kid Connect by clicking on the picture below.

For those just looking for fun crafts to make then click on the one below to get complete instructions.

I revised my St. Patrick's Day Unit to include reading and writing activities about Ireland and it's national symbols. I've included my own Shared Reading Book, Picture/Fact Reading Cards about Irish-Americans and Ireland's National Symbols, 2 Reading Texts and Comprehension Questions about Ireland and St. Patrick's Day at the 2nd and 3rd Grade levels and Map Activities and a Subject Poem about Leprechauns. Students will write a Country Report about Ireland, A Persuasive letter to a Leprechaun and a Subject poem about Ireland. There are also 4 writing prompts to include Informative text and Opinion Pieces. If you download the Preview File you will see sample pages of all the reading and writing activities in this unit. Just click on the image below.

Hope you all have the luck of the Irish and find some fun free resources for you to use with your students.

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Thanks for all you do to make a difference for your students.

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Chinese New Year: Free Resources, Activities, Printables, Books, and Crafts

Chinese New Year will begin on February 19th in 2015. It is the Year of the Goat/Sheep. Chinese New Year lasts for 15 days ending with the Lantern Festival. China's culture goes back thousands of years and is filled with many traditions and symbolism. I have always believed that students should study about other cultures as we are global citizens. I have put together some wonderful resources about Chinese New Year for you to access.

Let's start with good books for you to read or have your students read about Chinese New Year. You will find a summary of these 10 books by the Pragmatic Mom by clicking on the image below.

You will find this wonderful free reading text about the story of the Chinese zodiac by clicking on the image below.

There are lots of  free printables and activities about Chinese New Year that you can access by clicking on the image below.

You can always count on Scholastic to have a wealth of materials. You can check them out by clicking on the image below.

I  was hoping to put together a Chinese New Year packet last year but never did but I finally did. I uploaded it today. It not only has Reading texts about Chinese New Years and Traditions but also about China, The Legend of Nian, The Chinese Zodiac Animals and Personality Traits, and Lucky and Unlucky Chinese Symbols and Superstitions. The Reading Texts are differentiated at the 2nd and 3rd Grade Levels.

I have included the Chinese Years and Animals

And all the Chinese Zodiac Animal Personality Trait Cards so that students can find their Zodiac Animal, Read the Personality Traits, and Compare and Compare and Contrast how they are alike and different from their animal.

There are a variety of writing activities and poetry activities. You can check it out by clicking on the image below, read the description, and download the Preview file to see sample pages of all the materials and activities in this packet.

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Thanks for all you do to make a difference for your students.

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Valentine's Day Free Reading and Writing Activities, Books, and Crafts

I love Valentine's Day and giving my grand kids lots of cute cuddly stuffed animals. My birthday is only 3 days later so I usually get roses on my birthday instead of Valentine's Day. (They are usually 50% off after Valentine's Day) There are so many wonderful books to read and free resources that I found to share with you. Let's start with some great books for Read Alouds. You can find a great list on Amazon by clicking on the images below. Students will love Gilbert's Funny poems in the book by Diane de Groat. I loved reading "Valentine Mice" to my ESL students. It was a great book for acting out and teaching verbs.

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Looking for some free valentine's crafts to make? How about this Candy Bear Paper Craft. Get all the directions by clicking on the image below. There are lots of other craft ideas to check out as well.

How about a few more ideas for Valentine's Day cards and crafts? I found the one below at Education.com. You can download the activity and find lots more ideas to make your Valentine's week lots of fun for your students. Just click on the image below.

You can find poems and fun activities and party ideas at apples4theteacher as well as DLTK.

Well if that's not enough I have a few of my own to share with you. This past summer I revised and updated my very first Readers Theater script called "The Symbols of Valentine's Day" for Grades 2-3 which you can check out my clicking on the picture below. It includes a complete lesson plan from Day 1 to performing it. I had lots of feedback from teachers who actually said they learned a lot about the symbols, too. You can see sample pages of all the materials and texts when you download the Preview file.

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I just uploaded my Valentine's Day Reading and Writing Unit for Grades K-1. It's called Love Bugs Valentines Adventure.  I really had lots of fun writing it. There is a fun Shared Reading Book called "Love Bug, Love Bug What do you see?" Here's a sample of one of the pages in the book.

There is an Early Emergent Reader and Emergent level Reader, 3 differentiated Sequencing and Writing Activities, Reading Response Journal pages, Comprehension Activities, and more which you can check out by clicking on the image below. You can read the full description and download the Preview file to see sample pages of all the reading and writing activities in this unit.

Hope you find some fun activities to help celebrate Valentine's Day with your students.

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What is your favorite Valentine's Day activity?

Valentine's Day Writing Activities and Free Writing Activities

Everyone loves Valentine's Day. It's a great holiday to get your students writing. I have had such great feedback on my seasonal writing activities packets that I decided to make one just for Valentine's Day. It is a smaller version than my other ones, but is full of wonderful activities to help students write complete sentences that are found in my other packets. It would be great for those of you who teach Kindergarten who are beginning to teach sentence writing.

To begin with, students need to know:

• What a sentence is
• How to construct a sentence-Word order
• What parts does a complete sentence need to have
• Capitalization, Punctuation, Spelling rules
• Lot of words

You can read a lot more about writing by clicking HERE.

You can download these free Sentence frames by clicking on the image below: They are included in my packet and can be used for whole class instruction with understanding the parts of the sentence as you see in the image below the frames.

In my Valentines Writing Activities Packet students will learn the parts of the sentence using this example:

In order for students to write they need to:

• Have something to write about (Themes are great for this.)
• Know the vocabulary words needed to make a sentence.
• Read and listen to books being read to them about the topic.
• Talk about the books related to the topic.

I have included not only Word Wall Words but also Picture/Word Cards to help students become fluent with the vocabulary. Then students will participate in a whole group activity to make sure they understand what a sentence is and isn't before Making Sentences with Sentence Frames.

There are several other activities such as Unscramble, Write, and Draw as well as 3 different leveled Writing Assessments.

You can read the complete description by clicking on the image below. You can see sample pages of all the writing activities when you download the Preview file.

 

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Thanks for all you do to make a difference for your students. 

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