Leprechaun Fun For Everyone!

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

One of the best parts of being an elementary teacher is the wonder, innocence and excitement in little ones eyes...and boy were those 'Irish' eyes smiling today!

I love making magic happen in my classroom....so having a 'magical' creature create havoc and fun is right up my alley!

So what type of fun did we have getting ready for, and celebrating St Patrick's Day....TONS!

We started by making these adorable leprechauns last week!

This really is a simple project to do...

Give each child a 9x12 piece of green and peach (or tan, white, pink, etc) piece of paper.  I show them how to make a 'backwards L' and 'forwards L' to make the hat and a BIG 'U' to make the face, but send them off to do it on their own.  I used to have it pre-traced for them, but I like the look of child created art much better now!

Once the hat and face are assembled, they add the 'details'

and I give them strips of orange paper.  I show them how to curl it around a pencil and tell them they can use them for a beard and/or hair!

Here is the 'girl' version!

When they are all done, so made a pot of gold and taped them up...this was to show the leprechaun that we were leprechaun loving kinders and they should REALLY visit our classroom!

So the next day we get a note and have to roll 2 dice to find out our leprechaun's name....

and we posted it on our door!

Each day he would leave a shamrock in a spot that he had looked for our gold!  It was fun to find his new spot each day!  

So then it came time to build a leprechaun 'house' (you CAN'T say 'TRAP!'...he will hear it and never go near it!)

Each child brought in a box to decorate!  We had shoe, cereal, cracker, mac & cheese, ziploc & more boxes!  I let them go to town with my scrap buckets to create a leprechaun house!

We even talked about making signs to 'lure' him in!

...and gold inside the door to make him want to go in!

we set them all up in our meeting area on Thursday afternoon (they had no school on Friday because of parent/teacher conferences)

So....on Monday...St Patrick's Day...did we catch him???

The door was 'blocked' by this sign

 and he apparently had a REALLY fun time with pattern blocks, connecting cubes and more!

BUT...he knows how to spell!

 ...and he did leave his pot of gold!

BUT wait....look in the door...can you see something sticking out!

Oh Wait!  What is this??!!!

Leprechaun donuts, golden nuggets, Lucky Charms and his lucky hat?!

We hit the jackpot!

So about those leprechaun donuts...

 15 dozen of these gems were made this weekend!

The idea and box template came from Family Fun magazine!

Believe it or not, the boxes were more time consuming than the donuts!

(You can choose to have the 'window' [use junk mail envelope windows] or leave it as the shamrock paper from the template!)

 The donuts themselves are made from Cheerios!

The magazine says to paint the chocolate on...I dipped them and it worked just as well!

The cinnamon sugar ones are dipped in sugar water and then rolled in cinnamon and sugar!

Here they are all ready to be 'delivered' to my boys, nephews, neighbors and kinders!

So did we like the donuts...

I'd say yes!

And look what else we found...his PJs!!!

They were in the trap by the door!  Silly leprechaun!  We don't want him to be cold, so we left them out so he can pick them back up (and they are already safely tucked away for next year's adventures!)!

Thanks to the leprechaun we had Lucky Charms to use for a tasty subtraction lesson today!

We just started working with subtracting last week (and mostly with food!) and can always use a bit more practice to fill our minds..and bellies!

Each child got a pile of cereal and we used them to help us answer the problem.

 As you can see here... 3 cereal take away 2 cereal leaves 1 piece of cereal!

 We had to draw the picture before we got to eat it,

and we also got to make up our own problem on the bottom!

Feel free to download a copy of this worksheet (click the hyperlink) to use in your classroom as well!

Last week we used this set of Shamrock Sums to practice addition during centers.  I put them in the early finishers basket and they were the first to get pulled out today!

In writing we continue to work with 'how to' books...and of course today brought on a 'how to catch a leprechaun' book from a few of my kiddos!

(we talked about how orange was his least favorite color- I guess some took that to heart!)

(gold)

How cute?!!!

We also continued to work with 'magic words!'

They love this new found 'secret' and I have one student that comes in with secret messages for me to reveal everyday!  I love it!

So tomorrow we go back to 'boring' old kindergarten fun!!

But not for tooooo long....Friday we wake our hibernating bear!

I'd love to hear what kind of antics your leprechaun played and havoc s/he caused!

Until next post,