Language Arts Lessons for a St. Patrick and Ireland Unit Study
A Family-Style Unit Study of St. Patrick and Ireland: Language Arts Lessons for all ages
Discover the real stories of Ireland with these St. Patrick language arts lessons in grammar, phonics, handwriting, reading, and more!
These St. Patrick and Ireland family-style lessons are written from a protestant worldview where saints are seen as important historical figures who furthered the Christian kingdom but are not worshipped.
In these St. Patrick and Ireland Language Arts lessons, you and your kids will write a limerick, read about St. Patrick’s like and family life in Ireland, create silly sentences and learn vocabulary, listen to W.B. Yeats’ poetry, and discover original Irish folktales.
The St. Patrick Language Arts section of this Unit Study has family-style lessons with 3 main levels of difficulty. These 3 levels help you meet your child at the level they are currently working, instead of some arbitrary grade level.
The Early Learners lessons are generally for learners working at a Preschool, Kindergarten, or 1st & 2nd-grade level.
The Upper Elementary lessons are generally for learners working at 3rd to 5th-grade levels.
The Middle & High School lessons are generally for learners working at 6th to 12-grade levels.
Feel free to mix and match with the lessons and activities for the three different levels to find activities that best suit your children and their individual learning styles.
These St. Patrick Language Arts lessons use Charlotte Mason style Living Books, Read-aloud books, Independent Readers, Poetry, Vocabulary, Grammar, Phonics, and Spelling.
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St. Patrick Day English Language Arts
The following books are about St. Patrick’s life and mission, St. Patrick’s Day traditions & stories, and Irish life and culture.
Ireland has produced more poets and authors than any other country its size! So there are a lot of books and stories about Ireland and St. Patrick!!
Many of these books should be available at your local library. If not, look on YouTube for a read-aloud video of the book.
Read Aloud Living Picture Books
Early Learners
Patrick, Patron Saint of Ireland by Tomie dePaola. Tells the story of Patrick’s life and mission. Then, it has short myths and stories told about St. Patrick.
St. Patrick’s Day by Gail Gibbons. Gibbon’s books are non-fiction, but not in a dry boring way. 😉 Contains a short version of St. Patrick’s life. Also explains many of the traditions and history of the holiday. Excellent source for new vocabulary like shillelagh.
The St. Patrick’s Day Shillelagh by Janet Nolan and illustrated by Ben F. Shahl. A moving story about an Irish immigrant family and how their shillelagh is a treasured family possession.
Patrick’s Day by Elizabeth Lee O’Donnell and illustrated by Jacqueline Rogers. Cute story about a boy named Patrick who mistakenly thinks the St. Patrick’s Day parade is for him.
St. Patrick’s Day in the Morning by Eve Bunting and illustrated by Jan Brett. Little Jamie wants to prove he’s big enough to march in the St. Patrick’s Day parade.
Fiona’s Lace by Patricia Polacco. A lovely story about an Irish immigrant family that hands down a piece of Fiona’s lace from generation to generation, that symbolizes that home is where the heart is. Based on the true story of the author’s family.
A Fine St. Patrick’s Day by Susan Wojciechowski and illustrated by Tom Curry. Find out what happens between rival towns trying to outdo each other’s St. Patrick’s Day decorations when a leprechaun shows up to help. Has a good “moral of the story”.
Family Read Aloud Books
A Pot of Gold: A Treasury of Irish Stories, Poetry, Folklore, and (of course) Blarney edited by Kathleen Krull and illustrated by David McPhail If you only buy one book for this unit, it should be this one! A lovely collection of short stories, fables, and poetry from Ireland, a country that loves words. *All of the vocabulary words come from this book.
Independent Readers
Upper Elementary
The Legend of the Irish Castle (Box Car Children) created by Gertrude Chandler Warner. Also available on Kindle and Audible
The Cottage on Bantry Bay by Hilda Van Stockum (who also wrote The Winged Watchman) Charming story about an Irish family barely getting by in the 1930s combined with lots of historical facts. Would also make a great family read-aloud choice.
Middle-High School Level
Nory Ryan’s Song by Patricia Reilly Giff The story of an Irish family in the 1840s facing starvation and the loss of their land. (This book is the first in the Nory Ryan trilogy).
Writing
Grammar
Copywork and narration are real-life ways to work on grammar skills. Use the FREE St. Patrick Copywork and Narration page from the Free Resource Library. There are Copywork and Narration sets for Lower Elementary, Upper Elementary, and Middle/High School. Select the one that is best for your child’s ability. Each level contains 2 narration quotes and 3 copywork pages for a whole week of grammar.
After your child has written the sentence from dictation, let her see the original to check it with her work. Have her correct her work, so that she knows how it should look. Then have him re-write the selection in his very best handwriting using the printable.
Be sure to also use the St. Patrick Vocabulary Cards in the Free Resource Library as a way to work on parts of speech. Just simply cut the cards apart and sort them into piles of nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs.
The St. Patrick Silly Sentences Grammar Writing worksheets in the Free Resource Library are also designed to be used with the vocabulary cards. Just draw a card from each of the parts of speech piles and put them together to create a silly sentence.
Research Writing
If you’d like your student to research and record what they’ve learned about St. Patrick, have them use these St. Patrick, Patron of Ireland notebooking pages from our sister site, Homeschool Helper Online.
Creative Writing
Limericks are fun Irish poems that follow a set of rules for rhyming and patterning.
Here’s a traditional Irish limerick:
| There was a young man of Killarney Who was chock full of what is called blarney He would sit on a stile And tell lies by the mile Would this dreadful young man of Killarney. |
Learn the rules for writing limericks with these instructions from Poetry 4 Kids. Then have your kids write their own limerick. If you’d like some fun St. Patrick pages for writing their limerick, use these cute ones (in 3 levels/styles) from our sister site, Homeschool Helper Online.
Poetry
Early Learners and Upper Elementary
Look up some (clean) Irish limericks like these from Irish Expressions. Just be careful looking for limericks, they often have “naughty” puns.
Middle & High School
Learn about William Butler Yeats, considered to be Ireland’s greatest poet. He wrote a poem about the patron saint of Ireland, Patrick. Yeats won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1923.
Yeats published the poem, The Wanderings of Oisin, in 1889. Yeats was a protestant but was also fascinated by the myths of Ireland’s past Celtic and Druid deities. This poem is a conversation he imagined between Oisin and St. Patrick. You can listen to it (or read it) on Poem Hunter.
Your older students may want to study this poem for its structure. Each of the 3 parts has increasingly longer stanzas. The first stanza is created with four (iambic tetrameter) metrical feet, the second with five (iambic pentameter) metrical feet, and the third with six (anapaestic hexameter) metrical feet.
Spelling
Early Learners
If you don’t have a regular spelling word curriculum, use the St. Patrick Unit Study A to Z vocabulary cards from the Free Resource Library for your younger kids’ spelling this week.
Thread letter beads onto pipe cleaners to practice spelling your words this week. You can use big letter beads or small letter beads.
We have these lowercase letter beads at our house and they are a great size for younger fingers. The small letter beads are readily available at craft stores in the kids’ craft & bead section.
Vocabulary
Early Learners (Preschool & Kindergarten)
Use the St. Patrick Unit Study A to Z Vocabulary Cards from the Free Resource Library. There are 26 vocabulary cards so you can select which ones are best for your learner to work on learning.
It may be helpful for your early learners to go through the book, St. Patrick’s Day Alphabet by Beverly Barras Vidrine as an introduction to some of the vocabulary words. (I scoured YouTube looking for a video that introduced and explained some of these words without any luck.)
Early Learners (Lower Elementary) Upper Elementary & Middle to High School
Use the St. Patrick Vocabulary Cards in the Free Resource Library. There are 3 levels of cards in this download for all of your learners. *The words are all taken from the A Pot of Gold Family Read-Aloud book.
Folktales
Fiona’s Luck by Teresa Bateman and illustrated by Kelly Murphy. An original folktale about the wee folks and how Fiona outsmarts them.
Jamie O’Rouke and the Big Potato: An Irish Folktale by Tomie dePaola. A folktale about the laziest man in Ireland, potatoes, and leprechauns. Also by dePaola, Fin M’Coul: The Giant of Knockmany Hill
Brave Margaret: An Irish Adventure by Robert D. San Souci and illustrated by Sally Wren Comport. A fairy tale with sea monsters and hungry sailors and true love.
More Ideas for Your St. Patrick Unit Study:
Back to the St. Patrick Unit Study Main Page for History and STEAM lessons
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