Easter and First Day in Grenada

Last Friday we had a small Easter party in the classroom and did some crafts and an Easter egg hunt. It was nowhere near as involved or fun as St. Patrick's Day, but I honestly still think it's kinda weird that I can do so much for religious holidays in my classroom. St. Patrick's Day also just has more fun things that go along with it than Easter. In my mind Easter is really kind of boring in comparison. But the kids got candy so they were happy.

The kids had to go around and find all the Easter words and write them next to the correct picture.

Some did it perfectly and others really just wrote random letters, but they all tried pretty hard. And look how big they look now compared to the beginning of the year!

We made Easter eggs with tissue paper and glue paint.

Michelle's Easter Egg

Luis

Marian

Luis and Kenvi reading Dr. Seuss

Easter Egg hunt

Luis helping Hakim find Easter eggs.

We found one!

Class with their candy prizes after the hunt.

Again.

We are now in Grenada doing a visa run. We left Anaco Sunday morning at 4am. From there we took the hour drive to Barcelona and took a plane to Porlamar. We had a long layover so we went and spent the morning sleeping on the beach. We got back to the airport with three hours to spare (because it was an international flight and we got yelled at last time for not being on time) I still do not understand why that airport needs three hours to get about 30 people to check in, check bags and walk the 50 feet through security to their gate, but it's Venezuela so we just go through it. Their form of "security" is also the national guard rummaging through your bag for about 15 seconds, not what I would call "high security." After boarding in Porlamar we flew for about 30 minutes to Port of Spain, Trinidad and had a layover there (but luckily we didn't even need to get off the plane) then we took a 50 minute flight to St. George's, Grenada. I'm so glad that an hour and a half total of flying took us all day to complete... 

When we finally got to our hotel Sunday night we found out that they messed up our reservations. It took quite a while to try and sort things out and I still don't understand what they did long. The manager didn't seem like the brightest lady and we were all exhausted. Thanks to Saliha's negotiating skills they ended up putting us up in a villa and giving us an extra night here for free. Pictures of the hotel will come later....

On Monday we slept in a little bit (since no one had slept for about 36 hours) and then just spend the day in St. George's. We wandered around and went to the spice market. Grenada is known as the spice island so everywhere smells amazing. We bought a whole bunch of spices that we can't find anywhere in Anaco. We also found a guy selling homemade wines. I got two little tiny hand painted bottles (one of black wine and one of ginger wine) to bring back to Anaco for Dereek and I since we drink wine all the time with dinner. I wish I could bring more but I'm not sure how easy it's going to be to pack glass bottles of wine into luggage without them breaking... 

We also went and hiked up to Fort George and got a lovely view of the city. Like any other fort there wasn't a ton to do besides walk around, but it was breezy and the views were amazing. One of the last things we did was sit at a small restaurant/bar that is right on the water and have a drink before coming back to the hotel. We came back on the earlier side since we were all getting tired and all had some work to do that involved utilizing the internet whether it be for grad school or job searching. Overall, it was a good first day and I've decided I love walking around this island because everything smells amazing.

Spices and wine

Wine and spices

Cruise ship and sailboat ship

Thought this ship with five masts was pretty cool. Would've loved to see it with the sails up.

Walking up to Fort George

Who would've thought, but that building is actually a gym. And yes, we are in the fort right now.

Cannon and pretty blue water

Panoramic of St. George's 

Pretty colorful houses.

Again.

 Another Panoramic

And another...

Picture of the bay.

Inside the fort. I liked these yellow flowers growing by this old shuttered window.

A little run down.

This building with the red roof is the hospital. The hospital might not be as bad if you had an ocean view room..

Basketball court inside the fort.

Really old, but cool looking church in St. George's

Selling fresh fish straight off the boat.

Waterfront bar/restaurant.

Saliha and I waiting for drinks.

That's about all for now, we're about to get some breakfast and head to the beach near the hotel for the morning. This afternoon we might go to the more famous Grand Anse beach, but we're not positive yet. Hopefully tomorrow I'll be doing some snorkeling at the underwater sculpture park and maybe one other site as well. 

St. Patrick's Day (Or week in our classroom)

The past few days we've been doing activities revolving around St. Patrick's Day in school. On Tuesday we read a story about how leprechauns are mischievous and play tricks on people. We also talked about how they come from Ireland and learned a little bit about shamrocks. To go with our books we made our own shamrocks to try and make our classroom look like Ireland so maybe we could get a leprechaun to visit us.

Arya making her shamrock

Kenvi making his shamrock

On Wednesday morning the kids came into quite a surprise! A leprechaun had come into their classroom! The night before I put little footprints around the classroom, made fake gold and played some silly tricks like messing up the calendar and giving them extra points. The kids were pretty confused at first since leprechauns and St. Patrick's Day are completely new to them, but they got into it pretty quickly. Later on Wednesday we decided to make some rainbows since that's where leprechauns leave their gold so maybe they would come back again.

There was a leprechaun!

He left footprints and gold

And messed up our calendar

So everyone had to fix it

We also made some rainbows to try and get him to come back

Wednesday night I stayed up late and decorated the classroom again. I put footprints again, but also used some paper and glitter to make it a little more fancy. I also took all the chairs out and hid them in a high school classroom and put little "good luck" four leaf clovers where their seats used to be. The next day the kids came in waiting to see if the leprechaun had come back. As soon as they realized he did they were so excited! They also decided that he must've taken their chairs all the way to Ireland. At this point we decided enough was enough and we had to trap him! So on Thursday I brought in some boxes and pulled out all my green craft supplies and let them try and come up with traps. It was two or three kids per box and they had to do it all by themselves. I gave them about 30 minutes to work and it was great for the sharing and critical thinking skills. They all had some way that their trap was supposed to work. Luis and Marcel even wanted me to sleep at school so I could cut some string so that they could trap the leprechaun. 

What was left in place of their chairs

Trail of footprints and paper left by the leprechaun

Luis looking at what was left in place of his chair

Carol with her "Good Luck" clover

Since our chairs were gone we had to do our work on the floor on Thursday

I wanted to make parts of this whole thing educational so we talked about Ireland and learned what the Irish flag looks like. 

Michelle and Carol making their trap

Marcel and Luis were REALLY focused on making their leprechaun trap

Marian and Kenvi also were very focused on trap making

The final product of decorating the classroom Thursday night

Leprechaun tracks

The leprechauns messed with some of the kids traps and stepped on them and painted silly pictures on them and stacked the cups into towers.

Our green tables. These hats aren't put together here, it's just the pieces and the kids glued them the next day when they came in.

The leprechaun left candy and a clue near their traps!

The final prize at the end of the scavenger hunt left by the leprechaun

I had made green jello and "leprechaun juice" (aka green 7up) that the kids found in the fridge at the end of the scavenger hunt.

Now, finally up to today which was tons of fun! This morning (Friday) the kids were invited to come to class dressed in green clothes to celebrate St. Patrick's Day. They were really excited to come into a decorated classroom. At first they were a little disappointed that they didn't catch a leprechaun then they realized he had left them clues and got excited all over again. The first thing we did this morning was follow the clues left by the leprechaun (me) and go on a scavenger hunt all around the school. It was so much fun watching them run around looking for the clues. I've never had them be such good listeners as when they listened to me read them. Afterwards we made our hats and it was time for PE. When they got back we made fruit loop necklaces. The kids decided the leprechaun left them fruit loops because they must really like eating them since they are rainbow colored and leprechauns really like rainbows. Today we also ate our green jello and drank leprechaun juice and did an "experiment" left to us by the leprechaun. They had to mix the magic sparkly green powder with the magic green water. My kids really love doing any sort of messy experiment so I try and incorporate them whenever possible. Overall it was tons of fun with them today. 

Checking their traps for leprechauns

Running back into the school during their scavenger hunt

With a clue for me to read.

Running outside to the playground to look for another clue

Look what we found!

Luis is really concentrated on making his hat.

Showing off her fruit loop necklace

Making fruit loop necklaces

Luis and his necklace

Hakim and his "bloop bloop" necklace. He still has a long way to go with his English so when we all were calling them fruit loops he must've heard "bloop bloop" because that's what they were called all day until I made him slowly repeat after me the correct way to say fruit loop. 

Yum. Green jello and leprechaun juice.

Looking at the world through leprechaun juice makes everything look green.

Experiment time!

Not quite as exciting since they had an idea what would happen this time, but still good.

Happy St. Patrick's Day Everyone!!!!

Love, Ms. Allison and Pre-K 4