Students always love reading St. Patrick’s Day books. Today we are spotlighting one of our favorites, The Luckiest Leprechaun. We love this book because it has a great message about the importance of friendship. Elementary students always enjoy listening to this book and learning about MacKenzie O’Shammrock the grumpy leprechaun. - Jodi and the Starts With a Story Team
SUMMARY
MacKenzie O’Shammrock lives in a fairy garden that is inside a park. He is perfectly happy being alone because he must spend his time protecting his gold from Professor Chester. One day when MacKenzie is sleeping, dirt starts falling all over his house. He goes outside to see a dog digging in the ground. When MacKenzie gets mad at the dog, he immediately apologizes. Lucky, the dog, wants to make it up to MacKenzie by being his friend or guard dog.Â
At first, MacKenzie is annoyed by Lucky hanging around him. However, over time, MacKenzie starts to warm up to Lucky. One day when MacKenzie is sleeping, Professor Chester comes close to stealing his gold. Thankfully, Lucky is there to scare the professor away and MacKenzie is happy to have a guard dog. However, when MacKenzie wakes up later to find his gold gone, he starts to think Lucky tricked him. He is sad to have lost his friend and his gold. Lucky returns home and explains to MacKenzie that he spent the night protecting the gold from the professor and MacKenize realizes how great it is to have a friend.
USE THIS BOOK TO TEACH:
Here are some different ways you can use The Luckiest Leprechaun in your own classroom.
- Introduce the topic of point of view to students.
- Help students practice their summarizing and retelling skills.Â
- Engage students in “how-to” writing activities.Â
- Ask students to write reviews about the book.Â
- Practice identifying base words, prefixes and suffixes.
- Review prepositions and adverbs with examples for the book.Â
- Discuss the importance of friendship.
- Practice apologizing and discuss what makes a good apology.
NO-PREP PRINTABLE ACTIVITIES:
If you are looking for “ready to go” activities for the first day of school, be sure to check out the book companion. With it you’ll receive all of the following resources to align with this specific book:
- comprehension questions
- 30Â writing prompts with themed paper
- vocabulary activities
- word study print & go activities
- ideas for grammar lessons with focus sentence printables
- social emotional learning discussion topics
- graphic organizers to target specific comprehension skills and strategies
If you’re planning to read The Luckiest Leprechaun this St. Patrick’s Day, you’ll love our book companion.
GET THE PRINTABLE ACTIVITIES
ADDITIONAL BOOK SUGGESTIONS
You and your students will also love these similar books:
- How To Catch a Leprechaun by Adam Wallace
- Groundhog’s Day Off by Robb Pearlman
- Jamie O’Rourke and the Big Potato by Tomie dePaola
- The Gingerbread Man Loose at School by Laura MurrayÂ
TRY OUT A SAMPLE COMPANION
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