Sharing our St. Patrick’s Day basket quickly!  My basket is loosely inspired by items found in the Godly Play Saints Stories.  I probably should at least have an Irish flag and/or map in the basket next year, but I always forget to put my lessons and materials together far enough in advance.  Next year, next year…

• Spine Text:  Patrick, Patron Saint of Ireland by Tomie dePaulo.  No matter how many St. Patrick’s Day books I buy or check out from the library, it always comes back to this one.  The section from the back on various legends would be great for adding additional items to our basket.  Maybe a rubber snake?!

• The Lorica or St. Patrick’s Breastplate Prayer

• Our St. Patrick peg doll.  No it’s not beautiful and awe inspiring like so many of them out there, but my kids decided to make them by themselves one day when I was gone taking Caleb to speech.  That to me is 1,000 times better (although I admit I have a little twinge of envy when I see some of  the amazing collections other people have)

• Shamrock with the Father, Son, Holy Spirit labels

• Wooden Cross (used in our lesson, see below)

In honor of St. Patrick’s Day, I also have two new resources in the Work and Play, Day by Day TPT store!

St. Patrick’s Prepositions:  This is a COMPLETELY FREE lesson plan for using the Lorica (or St. Patrick’s Breastplate Prayer) to introduce or reinforce the concept of prepositions with lower elementary aged students.  The lesson is loosely based on the traditional Montessori introduction to prepositions.  File includes a copy of the Lorica with the prepositions and prepositional phrases underlined (shown in our basket), group or lesson presentation, and follow up activities complete with a through introduction and pictures.

St. Patrick’s Preposition Booklets:  This is a supplementary material for the lesson plans above.  You could certainly make your own booklets without purchasing the file, but for only 1.99 I have saved you a lot of time and I did give you the lesson plan for free.  Copy masters are provided for varying reading levels and abilities.  There are actually four versions in total.

Being a homeschool family, lessons are often presented to more than the age group they are designed for.  Here are some out-takes from our picture taking for the file!  For some reason, these didn’t make the final cut when I was getting the files ready for publishing…

Lucie wanted to play too, so she decided to talk to St. Patrick I guess?

Logan had an interesting idea of Christ IN me!

I always say that I will someday be a blogger that gets you these resources in a timely manner.  You know, BEFORE, the holiday….. You can be like me and print these off to use last minute or in the next few days, or you can bookmark and download the files now and then you will be really on the ball for next year!