St. Patrick's Day 2016!

Happy (2 days after) St. Patrick's Day!

This week was whirlwind!!  We had so much fun packed in to a short amount of time.

Since we had not used any of our 10 built in snow days, our district gave us an extra day off for Spring Break.  So instead of Monday being our first day off, they gave us Friday off too--yay!!

But this meant we packed the 5 days of activities we had planned for the week in to 4 days--crazy but fun!

Here is a peek at our week!


We made a class book:

Their pages turned out so cute, as usual!

She found a pot of 'magic stuff that works' at the end of the rainbow.  :)

We also made plans for catching a leprechaun.  This activity is great for sequencing.  This little girl did such a great job!

'First, I would use a net.  Next, I would sneak up on him.  Then, I would wait.  Last, I would capture him.'

Unfortunately, we did not have time to make actual leprechaun traps.  I really wanted to do this and know the kids would love it--so that is on the list for next year for sure!

My favorite day by far was Thursday.  First, we made these adorable Leprechaun masks!

They were so simple to make and the students absolutely loved them!

But this is not the only reason that day was my favorite.  Some of my favorite teaching moments come when you follow the students' lead, even if it is not on the lesson plan.  They come up with better ideas than me at times, and this St. Patrick's Day was one of those times!

The students came in that day dressed in their green and were so surprised and questioning where the leprechaun was.  They were so sure he was going to come visit.  Knowing I had a little surprise in store for them that afternoon, I simply said, 'Well, maybe he will come visit sometime, who knows.  But I bet if he does come, he will wait until we are out of the room.  He does not want us to catch him.'

This sparked a class discussion of how we could get the leprechaun to come visit and how we could trick him.  One of my students had the idea that we write a letter to the leprechaun.  Another student added to that idea, saying we should 'trick' him by leaving him snacks.  So when we got back from lunch that afternoon, we wrote the letter and set up the 'trick' together:

They thought we should leave him a treat to get him to come to our room.  One of my students had given me that little mini mug that I filled with water, and another student had brought in M&M packets.  So we set both out as a leprechaun snack to see if we could entice him to come!

After this, my students headed to PE and my teammates and I got to work on our surprise!  First, we made a mess of our rooms--and yes this killed my Type A personality to do!!  I just kept repeating to myself, 'it's for the kids, it's for the kids'...  :)

The 'leprechaun' caused all kinds of chaos in our room--he opened cabinets/drawers, moved things around, knocked things over, moved our chairs/seats, sprinkled some gold glitter, etc.  

He ate the snack and left this behind:

When the students got back from PE, they FLIPPED OUT!  They could not believe that naughty leprechaun got away and were determined to catch him! 

We found this note he had left behind:

Along with our first clue!  The leprechaun led us on a hunt through the school, leaving us clues at each place:

Our final clue led us to the cafeteria where we did not find the leprechaun, but we did find the GOLD! 

The leprechaun left a gold chocolate egg, gold cookies (we sprayed them with edible gold spray), green juice, and a special note!

The students had so much fun!  Although they were pretty sad we did not actually catch the leprechaun. ;)

Call me a bad teacher, but there was NO getting them back from this--so we went outside to recess for the last 20 mins of the day.  It was a beautiful day and our last before spring break, so we enjoyed it!

All of these activities (and more) came from my St. Patrick's Day pack.  Click here to check it out!

Thanks for checking out our St. Patrick's Day fun!  I would love to hear what you all did in your classrooms to celebrate!

Now I am off to enjoy my WEEK OFF!  :)