Wearing of the Green
by Judie Haynes
Add interest to St. Patrick's Day with these downloadable word puzzles of varying difficulty.
Top o' the morning to ye! The celebration of St. Patrick's Day is confusing to English language learners. Why do we wear green even if we aren't Irish? Help your students learn some basic vocabulary and the names of popular symbols for this holiday with these St. Patrick's Day word puzzles.
Rainbow Puzzle
A word puzzle based around the name "St. Patrick."
Shamrock Puzzle
Fill in the blanks using St Patrick's Day-related words.
St. Patrick's Day Word Search (Easy)
A word search puzzle featuring 13 words going horizontally and vertically.
St. Patrick's Day Word Search (Hard)
A word search puzzle featuring 13 words going horizontally, vertically, and diagonally.
St. Patrick's Day Links
Here are some links that I found valuable. This is a good way to enlarge your repetoire of St. Patrick's day materials.
- Find many good St. Patrick's Day puzzles at Edhelper.com
- Another good coloring activity is Jan Brett's St. Patrick's Day Hedgehog, "Hedgie."
- St. Patrick's Day Clipart and coloring pages can be found at BillyBear 4Kids
- Older students can read text and hear Irish music at St. Patrick’s Day Customs and Tradition
- Another good site with St. Patrick's Day cards is KidsDomain.com
- Young children will enjoy the poems and songs at alphabet-soup.net
Activity Downloads
Note: To view the classroom activities, you must have Acrobat Reader intalled. Acrobat is a free application available from Adobe Systems.
St Patrick hard wordsearch (76k .PDF)
St Patrick easy wordsearch (104k .PDF)
Shamrock puzzle (33k .PDF)
Rainbow puzzle (58k .PDF)
Related Links
St. Patrick's Day Shamrocks
Use St. Patricks's Day to give your students an opportunity to learn and use figurative language in English.