I figured I would start my St. Patrick’s Day activities this week in therapy since I have lots of different St. Patrick’s Day materials to use and only a short amount of time.  I’m going to be sharing about some different St. Patrick’s Day themed adapted books, St. Patrick’s Day books paired with visual pictures and questions, St. Patrick’s Day crafts/activities, along with some St. Patrick’s Day treat in the upcoming weeks.  I’m going to share a Free Leprechaun Dip recipe when it’s finished!  I’m so excited for my students to make it.  I created 2 new St. Patrick’s Day adapted books which include “Leprechaun, Leprechaun What Do You See?” and “Where is the Shamrock?”

“Leprechaun, Leprechaun What Do You See?” focuses on number concepts 1-10 and identifying different St. Patrick’s Day themed items.  It’s great to work on following directions, building up vocabulary skills, number correspondence, and turn taking with others if you are reading it with a group of students.  On each page the Leprechaun see a different number of St. Patrick’s Day themed items.  I have my students touch each box along the top as we read “Leprechaun, Leprechaun What Do You See?  Then we move to the bottom of the page and read “I see…” I point to the item on the page and we count “one” and if my student is verbal I wait to see if he/she can name the item.  If not I name the item because I know some of the terms will be new to the student.  I say “one pot of gold” and then we finish touching the boxes along the bottom as we read “on St. Patrick’s Day.”

I have the student find the corresponding number to match how many items are in the book.  You can always change the prompting by holding up 2 numbers to see if the student can identify the number from a visual field of 2 numbers.  If your student still has difficulty I hold up 2 number and say what each number is because I want to teach the student the numbers.  For example; for the horseshoe page I might say “two horseshoes” and then hold up the number 2 and 8 and say “2” or “8”.  The student then selects the number and places it in the book.

We continue to read the book this way.  If you have multiple students in a group I have the students take turns on each page.  After we finish a page I ask “whose turn?” and wait for the student whose turn it is to say “my turn” and I move the book in front of the student so he/she can have a turn to point to the words and help me count and identify the St. Patrick’s Day item.

For my higher students, I stop on each page and ask different questions.  For example, after the student attaches the correct number and item on the page I ask “how many….?” or “what color is the…?”  or “where do you…?”  So on the lucky bird page I would ask “how many lucky birds?”  Even though we just counted the birds many of my students have difficulty answering that “how many” question.  Sometimes the student has to recount all the item on the page multiple times before they can answer that “how many?” question.  I might also ask “what color are the birds?” or “where do the birds live?”  I always have multiple students working on understanding and answering “wh” questions so it’s great to target those goals while reading.

As a follow-up activity to work on this “how many?” concept I created some worksheets.  If you would like a FREE copy of these pages please click the following link –St. Patrick’s Day Counting

The first 2 sheets each have six different boxes with a different number of St. Patrick’s Day items in them.  My thought was you could attach these sheets inside a file folder and use it as a file folder activity.  Laminate the file folder and put hard Velcro in all the empty boxes.  Then laminate the number pieces, place soft Velcro on the back of each number, and attach the numbers along the bottom of the page.  The student can then select the correct number to match the items in that square.  This is a great follow-up activity to practice one-to-one correspondence and review those holiday vocabulary terms after you finish reading the book.

The final 2 pages each have 10 “how many” questions which require the student to count the different number of items to answer the question.  You can copy this page and use it as a worksheet.  Just have the students count the items and write the answer in the box.  Another option is you could put the worksheets in page protectors or laminate them and have the students write on the sheets with a dry erase marker.  This is great because you can re-use them multiple times within the upcoming weeks.

These are just a couple quick follow-up activities to pair with the book and focus on answering that difficult “how many?” question.  Here is the link for this free resource –St. Patrick’s Day Counting

If you are interested in purchasing the books you can find them on TPT with this link – St. Patrick’s Day Adapted Book Series