Children are taught the foundations of writing beginning in the first grade. With this skill being critical not only in more advanced schoolwork, but also in the workforce, enabling first graders to grasp these skills becomes one of a teacher's main tasks. Besides reading to kids, making daily events and activities a part of the reading curriculum helps to spark a child's interest in becoming a better writer. Around holidays like St. Patrick's Day, holiday icons like leprechauns and the Blarney stone become not only a gateway into reading, but culture as well.
Fantasy plays a big role in a child's life, and fantasy stories include fantastical creatures like fairies and leprechauns. A "Leprechauns and Me" activity promotes not only writing skills, but reading and drawing skills also. Ask your first graders to come up with a story about the day they met a leprechaun. Get started with this unit by putting up pictures of leprechauns on the bulletin board and reading them stories about leprechauns. Ask students to write the story using some of the phrases from the writing topics; these will help them start their sentences. Once the story portion of this exercise is done, they should go on to create pictures for the book, including the front cover.
Rhymes help build reading skills by teaching kids how to identify sounds. Creating a leprechaun poetry unit gives the children in your class a chance to work with some rhyming sounds. Start a rhyming unit by reading them poems and rhymes by children's authors in addition to stories about leprechaun legends. Make a list of words from the readings that you want the kids to use in their own poems and pass out the list to them. Ask them to write a variety of poems about leprechauns and St. Patrick's Day. If you'd like to make this an ongoing project, start a book project of holiday poems. Keep the poems from each holiday in a file for each child. They can bind the book at the end of the year.
Leprechauns are fantasy creatures similar to elves and fairies. According to Irish legend, leprechauns inhabited Ireland before the Celts did. Their lives are open to interpretation. That being the case, create a leprechaun writing unit about a day in the life of a leprechaun. Ask your kids to include information like what the leprechaun ate for breakfast, who his friends are, and what kinds of leprechaun games he plays. Once the exercise is completed, have the kids read their stories in their reading groups to help develop speaking skills as well.