Incorporating crafts into the curriculum allows students to create personalized and original pieces that showcase their creativity and are a fun way to work on fine motor skills.
Today I’m sharing a few of my favorite writing craftivities that connect the St. Patrick’s Day holiday to students’ own lives making learning more meaningful. I’m also including 2 fun crafts that can be used as cute seasonal decor to make your classroom look more festive.
Leprechaun Writing Craftivity
This activity combines language arts instruction with a fun St. Patrick’s Day craft. We completed the writing prompt first during group time. I like giving students choice in their writing so they got to choose from 2 writing prompts:
If I had a pot of gold…
I would hide my pot of gold…
We had been talking and learning about leprechaun lore so this activity allowed the students to be “in the leprechaun’s shoes” so to speak and think about what they would do if they had a pot of gold or where they would hide it to keep others from finding it.
After completing the writing portion of the activity, we got to work on creating the leprechaun. We used paper plates for the head because when completed it gives the craft a sort of 3D effect.
I have been doing this craftivity for several years and have done it 2 different ways – with kid drawn faces and with real student photos.
I’ve also used different methods for making the beard – tissue paper squares with my younger pre-k students and tear art with my kinders. I really like the fine motor practice that students get with the tear art method! Both turn out cute!
Students then attached their leprechaun faces to construction paper and glued on their writing prompts and leprechaun hands.
They make such a cute classroom or hallway display!
Rainbow Writing Craftivity – A Rainbow is…
This rainbow writing craftivity relates the colors of the rainbow with students’ environments making the learning more meaningful.
For each color of the rainbow, students write and/or draw something of that color on a rainbow color strip. They then put the strips in order and glue them to a cloud entitled “A rainbow is…”. (Since my kinders are familiar with the color word purple more than violet and indigo I use a purple color word strip. You can replace it with an indigo and a violet color word strip to resemble the real colors of the rainbow.)
I love how these look hanging from our ceiling!
I’m Lucky To Be Me St. Patrick’s Day Craftivity
I like this craftivity because it requires students to reflect on their lives and what makes them unique and special.
I’ve also done this activity 2 different ways – using student names and using student photos. After a class discussion, students wrote 4 reasons they felt lucky to be themselves (1 on each leaf of a “lucky” four leaf clover). I then displayed them on our classroom door with the title “Mrs. O’Block’s Lucky Charms” (sorry I couldn’t locate a picture of my door at the time of this writing).
Shamrock Suncatchers Craft
These suncatcher crafts really make your room look festive and brighten up your windows (if you don’t have windows they can be hung from the ceiling)!
I traced a shamrock pattern onto green construction paper then cut it out (I folded the paper in half and cut multiple shamrocks at once to save time). I then glued it on wax paper.
I gave students cut up tissue paper squares in various shades of green, watered down glue, and paintbrushes. They painted on some glue to the back of their shamrocks and glued on the squares until it was covered.
I Can Make Green! Craft
In the St. Patrick’s Day PowerPoint that I show students they learn that yellow and blue make green so I wanted to let them try it out for themselves.
I have used both watercolor paint and watered down tempera paint for this craft and both have worked well. With my younger pre-k students I give them a small container of yellow paint and a small container of blue paint (they choose from light blue or dark blue). I then have them add the blue paint to the yellow paint a little bit at a time and mix them together until they get the shade of green that they like. They paint their four leaf clovers with their newly created green paint.
With my kindergarten students I have them mix the paint directly on their clovers to create various shades of green. First they paint a small section yellow or blue, rinse their brush in water, then paint over it with the other color and mix together. They discover that using more yellow gives you lighter shades of green and more blue gives you darker shades of green. The four leaf clovers they create have various shades of green and turn out very pretty and each one is unique.
I’ve used 2 options for displaying each child’s green shamrock – letting them make their names with glitter or gluing on their photos.