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…

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…

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…

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…