Teacher's Guide to St. Patrick's Day

Students love St. Patrick's Day and you can incorporate the festive holiday into any subject. From the history of St. Patrick to bulletin board displays, you'll have a great time getting your students involved and excited about learning. Start planning today and you'll be their favorite teacher ever.

St. Patrick's Day falls on a Monday in 2008, so you may want to start your St. Patrick's Day Lesson Plan the week before. Having a small party on a Monday will really give the students something to look forward to after the weekend and will encourage attendance.

DOOR DECORATION
A cool decorated door always puts the kids in a good mood and helps them look forward to coming to your class. Decorating the door by your self can take a lot of time, so enlist the students to help. Use black paper from the paper roll for the background. The black will really make the green accents pop. Cover the entire door from top to bottom. Next, pass out green construction paper for the students to draw and cut out shamrocks. If you teach early elementary students, you may want to print out a shamrock and let them color and cut it out. Here is a printable shamrock for this task: http://www.coloringcastle.com/pdfs/seasonal/stpat-sh amrock.pdf. While they are coloring and cutting their shamrocks, tell them about the importance of the symbol of the shamrock to the Irish. St. Patrick used the shamrock to symbolize The Holy Trinity: The Father, The Son, and The Holy Ghost.

Use green pre-cut letters to spell out "Welcome to Ireland!" and tape to the center of the door. If you don't have pre-cut letters, you can easily print out the words in your favorite font and in green ink. Cut out the lettering and tape to the door. Here's a web page with specific Irish and Celtic fonts: http://www.1001freefonts.com/celtic-fonts.htm.

To keep your door from looking like a March of Dimes fund raiser, only use a few of the shamrocks. Pick the best ones and use the rest of the shamrocks to decorate the room and bulletin boards. Have an artistic student draw a leprechaun, a pot of gold, and a rainbow on white paper or poster board, cut it out, and then tape it to the door.

BULLETIN BOARD
Now that your door is finished, let's start decorating the bulletin board. Use green paper from the paper roll to lay down the background. If you have St. Patrick's Day border, use it. If not, use black. The black will accent the other board elements.

SOCIAL STUDIES
Print out a map of Ireland on a transparency and use an overhead projector to draw the map on the green paper. Use a pencil to draw it and once you're finished, use a black marker to go over the pencil lines. You may want to mark the division of north and south Ireland and mark Dublin. If you're teaching Social Studies, use the same map to teach and quiz the cities and bodies of water. Here's a website for a printable map: http://www.nationalgeographic.com/xpeditions/atlas/i ndex.html?Parent=europe&Rootmap=irelan&Mode=d&fs=www 3.nationalgeographic.com&fs=plasma.nationalgeographi c.com.

MATHEMATICS
Use the Irish flag to incorporate simple math. The Irish Flag is easy to create, color, and display on the bulletin board. Cut 8x11 inch printer paper in half. Give a half to each student. Have them measure the long side of their paper with a ruler, divide that number by three, and divide the page into three vertical rectangles. The outside left rectangle is colored green and the outside right rectangle is orange. The center rectangle is white and doesn't need to be colored. Use these mini Irish flags as a border decoration for the Irish map on the bulletin board. You can also tape these flags to straws and let the kids carry them around on St. Patrick's Day.

MORE SOCIAL STUDIES
For the Social Studies and/or History lesson, discuss the St. Patrick's life. He was born in Great Britain under the name Maewyn Succat. He was sold into slavery as shepherd in Ireland at the age of sixteen by pirates. He discovered the Christianity religion and began converting pagans into Christians. Maewyn changed his name to Patrick during this time to sound more Christian. While he was in Ireland, he set up churches, established monasteries, and founded schools to convert the Irish to Christians. Legend has it that he drove out all of the snakes in Ireland into the sea, where they drowned.

LANGUAGE ARTS
After this quick overview of St. Patrick's life and to incorporate Language Arts, explain to the students the definition of an historical fiction and have them write one for St. Patrick. Another writing assignment is for the students to write a first person narrative on getting kidnapped and sold into slavery. A simpler writing technique is to write a journal entry from St. Patrick's point of view expressing how he might have felt about getting kidnapped, slavery, or what made him turn to religion.

SCIENCE
An easy and fun Science project is coloring a white carnation green. Since the flowers take about 24 hours to soak up the dye, you will want to do this on the Thursday before St. Patrick's Day. This way, the kids can take the flowers home with them on Friday. Now here's the project:
Items: A white carnation for each student, a plastic cup for each student, green food coloring, water, and a knife.

Experiment: 1. Slice the stem at an angle. This is a job for you, the teacher. Remember that children should never use a knife and to put the knife away after using.

2. Fill the cups with water. Use 50 drops of green food coloring in each cup. Green food coloring doesn't travel as fast as the blue or red dyes. The more food coloring you use, the richer the color in the flowers. Write the student's name on the cup.

3. Place the carnations in the cups of water. Let them sit in the food coloring for at least 24 hours.

The lesson: Water travels through flowers in a process called Capillary Action. Water pulling up through the plant and out by evaporation is called Transpiration. The evaporating water pulls the water inside the plant up and through it, as if sucking through a straw. This is called Cohesion.

MUSIC
If you're having a St. Patrick's Day party on Monday, you're going to need music. A lot of traditional Irish music has inappropriate lyrics for younger ears, but a band called Pale, Stout, and Amber (http://www.palestoutamber.com/) has soft Celtic tunes and instrumental ballads suitable for all listeners.

DANCE
If you're lucky to live in an area with traditional Celtic dancers, try and book them to perform a demo for your class. If this is unfeasible, rent or purchase one of the Riverdance videos to show your students the traditional Irish dance. You can also teach them that when the Irish settled into the Appalachian Mountain area, a new dance was formed: clogging. Clogging is a mix of tap dance and Celtic dance. Clogging is very popular in America today and it may be easier to find cloggers in your area to perform for your classroom.

Plan your St. Patrick's Day Lesson Plan and your children will be enthusiastic and engaged. There's nothing more fun for them to imagine getting pinched by little green leprechauns all day. May the luck of the Irish be with you!