Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Oh, St. Patrick's Day in first grade - the crafts, the leprechaun traps, the teacher-made leprechaun-made mischief! So much fun!  We definitely had our share of all of these things this past week.  Plus, with Friday being a furlough day for me, I had to cram it all into four days.  Throw in some pretty heavy downpour and non-stop rainy day recesses, and I think it's safe to say that I have never been more ready for Spring Break in my LIFE!  I was a little too happy to say goodbye to my class on Thursday afternoon for a nice 10 day break.

M's Leprechaun Trap.  Very elaborate, complete with leprechaun-confusing paint and a one-way trap door.  Love it!

I sent home a letter at the beginning of March letting families know that they can participate in an optional project at home and make a leprechaun trap.  The letter reminds them to use everyday items and to not buy anything special for the project.  I had more traps this year than ever before!  Seeing as we are going to jump into a persuasive writing unit as soon as we return from Spring Break, I decided to take the traps one step further this year.  Students had to come up with reasons why their traps were the best.  I told them that we were going to film commercials for their traps and play them on LSN (The Leprechaun Shopping Network).  Don't tell my principal, but we spent a few minutes watching commercials on our classroom TV and brainstormed what it was about these commercials that made people want to buy the product they were pitching.  

After that, the kids got to add some flashy advertising to their traps.  They wrote down their product's best parts on these flashy signs, and then they glued them down onto the traps.  Next, it was time to film the commercials.  They came out so stinking cute!  I'd post them on here, but I don't know how to block out a kid's face in a movie quite yet.  

Why, yes - that is a silver leprechaun ladder!

To tie it all together, I front loaded persuasive writing by doing some whole-class writing.  I randomly chose a leprechaun trap to write about, and I modeled for the whole class how to write a persuasive essay.  I wrote about why that leprechaun trap was the best one available, working the reasons that they had put on their advertisement into the essay.

Since Friday was a furlough day, the leprechauns had to come visit us on Wednesday night.  So, before leaving school on Wednesday, we set out a letter we had written to the leprechauns, some chocolate coins, and our traps.  After a few students thought that watching LSN might keep the leprechauns in our room all night, I told the kids I would leave the TV on and tuned to LSN before I left for the night.  Well, those little mischief makers stopped by our room and caused the usual mischief.  The traps had been thrown about, the gold had been collected and put into each students' cubby, green footprints were everywhere, and they even left their leprechaun dust!  

What cracks me up is how eager the kids are to believe in it all.  When someone says that the dust is just glitter, I tell them that I used to think that, too, but then I realized that it must be magical because it doesn't vacuum up as easily as glitter does.  It takes weeks to get it all out of the carpet.  They never even question it. 

They found the miniature note that the leprechauns left behind, and we had to use a magnifying glass to read it.  The kids love this day.

Confession - I do not love this day.  Usually, I can contain holidays and some of the excitement in a party that I time out perfectly so that it always ends our day.  Then I get to send the kids and their extra energy out the door and home to their parents.  Well, since the leprechauns visit overnight, the craziness starts bright and early.  I swear, the kids are vibrating by 8:02 and don't settle down until well after I've sent them on their way.  I'd take Halloween over St. Patrick's Day anytime!

Ok, next came our Lucky Charms math project.  Each student got a cup of lucky charms, and they tallied up their cereal bits and marshmallows on their worksheet.  We then added all the numbers up and created a visual of our final results.  I cut strips of paper into various sizes to represent 1, 2, 5, 10, and 100.  What I love about this project is that it reaches all my kids.  Some of them are still struggling with skip counting while others have it mastered.  Well, this gives kids who are struggling the chance to  count the smaller totals and it challenged others to skip count well past 100 or even 1,000.  Plus, who doesn't love eating Lucky Charms?

That's all for now.  In my rush to get home on Thursday afternoon, I left all of my files on my school computer.  So, I plan to stop by school next week very briefly, and I will upload the files then. *Update -  here they are! If you download one of the files, please make sure you are following my blog.  Thanks!

Lucky Charms Tally Chart (The tally pics are lighter, so when it is printed out, the kids can just write tally marks right on top of the picture)

Leprechaun Trap Advertising

Cheers!
Meghan