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Happy St. Patrick’s Day!
I hope that you are having a great day full of good luck and mischief! My students didn’t catch anything in their Leprechaun traps, but the Leprechaun did leave us quite the surprise! We enjoyed the party atmosphere, along with some rainbow chips cookies. I love this holiday because it gives me the opportunity to let my students just be kids. I try to take advantage of any opportunity to make things magical, and inspire just a little extra fun. I could go on and on about how many standards we met while building Leprechaun traps, and doing St. Patrick’s day themed math and language activities, but sometimes what we…
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Finished Leprechaun Traps!
My students looked forward to building Leprechaun traps all week long. I drew out the process a bit by having them experiment with specific materials, and draw out their plans, but when the time came to actually build the traps, I was still surprised by their intense focus! I really should have left more time for this activity, they definitely would have used it. Most of them really did use their drawn plans, referring to them often as they put together different pieces of their traps. I ended up sacrificing the paper leprechauns from our Juggling Leprechauns counting set, to be used as “decoy Leprechauns” but they put the rest…
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St. Patrick’s Day Jewelry
I had the best intentions of stocking up on some St. Patrick’s day stuff for my dramatic play area when I went to the dollar store a couple of weeks ago, and I did end up buying a few things – some Leprechaun hats and shamrock sunglasses – but what I really wanted were some mardi gras-type necklaces, and call me cheap but I couldn’t bring myself to spend $1 on two necklaces. Anyway (I promise that I really do have a point..) today we made green necklaces to wear on St. Patrick’s day. We use beads often, so I really didn’t think that this activity would attract that much…
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To catch a leprechaun…
This morning our little leprechaun friend left us a note – our simple popsicle stick and pipe cleaner traps weren’t enough to catch that sneaky Leprechaun, but his note suggested that we make a plan, so that’s exactly what we did. We got down to business with some easel paper and brand new markers – because when you have serious business to attend to, you need new markers – and drew out some plans for our next attempt. The children have the basics down, they are pretty sure that in order to catch a leprechaun they are going to have to lure it with a rainbow and a big pot…
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A little art anyone?
I’m enjoying a snow day at the moment :). This doesn’t happen often so I really let myself get into it – slept in late and left my PJs on all day! Since I don’t have any Leprechaun trap updates for you, I thought I’d share an art project that we did last week. My students absolutely loved this one. I got the easel out and watered down some Tempera Paint, then let them use eye dropper to drip-paint. We did it as a group project, so they built on each other’s work – and yes, at the end it was all a lovely shade of brown, but as they…
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Preparing for St. Patrick’s Day
Leprechaun Traps! My students have been asking about St. Patrick’s day since we returned from Christmas Break, so I knew that I would have to make it good this year. Last year they were super into it. They made detailed plans for Leprechaun traps, and then spent days constructing them out of classroom materials. We painted a giant rainbow to lure the leprechaun into the classroom, and left tiny leprechaun donuts (frosted fruit loops) to lure a Leprechaun into their trap. They never did get to see him, he got away, but they absolutely remember the attempt. This year I decided to do something similar. I’m making this whole week…
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Ideas for displaying children’s work
It is pretty standard to display student work in the classroom, I could go on and on about the many different reasons that this is a great idea, but I think that we all get it, we want our students to be proud of the work that they do, and we want to show them that it has value. My goal has always been to display as much of my students’ work as possible, without wallpapering my walls in it. I want my classroom to look neat, and uncluttered, and I want displays to make sense and be aesthetically pleasing. Here are some examples of the ways that I have…
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Textile art
I am constantly looking for new ideas for art projects. We have painted with every single utensil that I can think of, we have made pictures with glue, and sculptures with a vast array of different materials. So last week I deployed materials from my own creative stash. I am an avid quilter, though you wouldn’t know it because I haven’t had much time to devote to this over the last couple of months. But I figured it was time to attempt a quilting project with my class. We have sewn before, creating scarves one winter, and sewing paper to create decorations for the classroom, so they have seen me…
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A Great Giveaway!
I’m so excited to be participating in my first giveaway. Laura From Differentiation Station Creation is doing a Giveaway to celebrate her success on Teachers Pay Teachers and to thank all of her supporters. You can check out the prizes and enter the giveaway here!
