With a good portion of the Fractus Learning team based in Ireland, it is nearly time to start kicking up the heels and painting the town green. As a popular day for celebration around the world, regardless of any Irish connection, St. Patrick’s Day can be a great excuse to try something different with your class.
Whether you genuinely celebrate the occasion, or just use it as a platform for learning, there is plenty of opportunity to use the Irish holiday in the classroom. This year being the year of Science in Dublin, you can use the green theme to focus on the environment, biology or renewable energy. As well as looking into the geographical, cultural and historical value of St. Patrick’s Day there are a plethora of Irish themed arts, crafts and foods you could also try with your students. To help along the way, here are five sites that can give you a kick-start in finding the perfect St. Patrick’s Day (or any other holiday for that matter) activities for your class.
St. Patrick’s Day – Ideas For Your Class
Squidoo
Squidoo is a community website that allows any user to create pages on their subjects of interest. This open community means that there is a very broad selection of topics and posts on the site. Pages on Squidoo are called lenses and are much like blog posts, except they “focus” on a single subject. Squidoo is a great tool when looking for specific products or ideas on a particular subject.
Ustream
Ustream is a site dedicated to live streaming events and video feeds. If you can manage to tear yourself away from the adorable live streamed penguins in Seaworld, there is a huge selection of channels covering news, sport, Tech and lots more. This year the site is streaming the St. Patrick’s Day parade live from Dublin and many other locations that celebrate the occasion on the streets.
Etsy
Whether you are planning to buy artistic and crafty items online, or just looking for inspiration, you can not top Etsy. Featuring work from extremely talented individuals around the world, you will find all sorts of authentic and amazing pieces on the site. Do be sure to check out the St. Patrick’s Day Baby Beard Beanie if you are looking for a good laugh.
Pinterest has seemingly taken the world by storm and not without reason. It is a fantastic way to view, peruse and explore content online. This lends itself very well to looking for ideas that you could replicate in the classroom. You do not need an account (currently invite only) to search the site and it is an enjoyable and visual way to find articles, products, video and images online.
St. Patrick’s Day on Pinterest
Momtastic
There are so many blogs and sites aimed at ideas for entertaining children, so it is hard to pick just one. Momtastic gets the pick though in this case for Steph Morgan’s post on the St.Patty’s Day Limerick Treasure Hunt. This is a brilliant idea where children are set on a mission to find their “pot of gold” (candy) by following limerick clues along the way. A little bit of thinking power is needed to put together a few Irish rhymes, but it will be well worth the effort.
Is St. Patrick’s Day a big event in your school? What do you have planned for you class?
Image courtesy of Flickr, f_shields