St. Patrick's Day

           I will start by saying that St. Patrick's Day is one of my most favorite holidays. When I was in college, I studied abroad in Paris and had a very close Irish friend who was studying at the University of Dublin. Our break at the American University of Paris fell over St. Patrick's Day, so a group of us went to Dublin and stayed with my friend. I fell in love with Ireland and it's people. They are wonderfully kind and really know how to celebrate! I went back to Ireland three times during my stay in Paris and traveled outside of Dublin to the countryside. I stayed with my friend and his family. It was a welcomed break from city life and the home cooked meals nourished my soul as well as my body. I plan on taking my son when he is old enough, and I would recommend traveling there if you have the means.

          First graders have amazing imaginations which is what I really love about teaching such young individuals. We start off the celebration early by talking about Leprechauns. I read many books about the tricky fairy folk. If you don't know anything about them, here are a few facts. They are fairy folk and are considered elves. They make all of the fairies shoes. They love the color green. They love gold and hide it at the end of rainbows. We had such a wonderful time reading and writing about Leprechauns. I even have two students writing an "All About" book on leprechauns this week.
         Next, we moved into the STEM lab to build a trap. Each student was able to set his or her trap out around the room to see if a leprechaun could be caught. They were very serious about finding the right place. Most chose by the door because logically speaking they were more likely to catch a leprechaun when he came through the door if their trap was close by. Very clever 1st graders!

We wrote two "How To" pieces, one on building a trap and another on catching a leprechaun. Both turned out very adorable. I really have master writers in class this year.
       On St. Patrick's Day, a leprechaun did visit the classroom organizing all of the green crayons, sorting the green dice and connecting cubes, turing over chairs, and leaving little green footprints everywhere.

            He even took all my dry erase boards and replaced them with all green ones. We later found out that the green markers he left me were very messy to get off the board and turned my whole hand green! No one caught him, but he lead us on a scavenger hunt around the school and left us cupcakes, apple juice, and Lucky Charms for our party! 

Of course the scavenger hunt written in poetry form lead us all around the school to all the important places. After walking all over the school, the treats ended up being right under our noses in the classroom.  What a tricky little elf!We used the Lucky Charms to create a graph of the different types of marshmallows. This is the perfect introduction to graphing in math. The students can line up the marshmallows in each box, which allows me to correct students that start from the top. Then they can either create a normal bar graph or a picture graph. Both types of graphs are apart of the 1st grade graphing standards. 

The day was a giant success with all the students believing in leprechauns!