Choosing Adventure Over Security: 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.