Thursday, March 17, 2011

Those Pesky Leprechauns!

One of the best parts of being a teacher is creating magic for the kids.  Holidays are a fabulous opportunity for this and with today being St. Patrick's Day, well, let's just say......
magic was made!

A couple of my kiddos created a leprechaun trap today before heading off to school.  They were so excited and spent about 2 hours working on it!  At this point, while I was impressed with their ability to stick with an activity for that long, I was a bit skeptical on whether or not they really believed the leprechauns were going to come.  I mean, these are third and fourth grade boys.  Who don't believe in the tooth fairy.  Or the Easter Bunny.  Or even Santa.  But, realizing that at the very least I'd be able to make some magic for my younger students, I upset the trap, stole all the pennies being used as 'bait' and sprinkled green and gold glitter.....on my carpet. (I should insert here that I have a love/hate relationship with glitter.  I love how it can complete a project but I absolutely HATE the mess it creates!)  I also typed up a little poem from the leprechaun himself.

When my kindergarteners got back from school they were, as I expected, very excited to see that a leprechaun had been in our room.  As my older students started to trickle in, they were pretty excited too.  Then I went to pick up the boys who had built the trap.  They were hardly even on the bus before asking about the trap and when they got back, were so excited to see that they had almost caught a leprechaun.  I think what shocked me the most was when their parents came to pick them up, they just had to tell them all about the trap!  (the best part was the looks on the parent's faces as they tried to figure out how on earth their child really believed that a leprechaun was real!)

And I have to say, the treat the 'leprechaun' left was delicious!


Our version of a
"Shamrock Shake"

1 scoop vanilla ice cream
Sprite (add extra food coloring to make it more green)
Whipped Cream
Gold (or rainbow) sprinkles

The best part of the day? 

"Ms. Jessica, you always make things so much fun!" ~ 2nd grade girl

Don't you just love holidays? :)

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

1 comment:

  1. You sound like such a great teacher! I remember my 1st grade teacher did a lot of things like that in her class and she always was my favorite =)

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