Magic, Magic Everywhere!

We spent the week learning about rainbows and leprechauns. Unfortunately, due to the fact that a teacher from another classroom was home with a sick child I was on my own most of the week. I didn't capture as many moments as I would have liked but I still managed to get a few. I will post again with more about the weeks projects and some pictures of the final products.

Early in the week we used tweezers to separate the marshmallows from a tray of lucky charms. We left them in a bowl on our circle table hoping the leprechauns would come and maybe leave us a treat. We were so surprised to find the bowl empty the very next day and the table and windowsill dotted with tiny green footprints. How in the world did those leprechauns get in? I wish I'd had the camera out to capture the little faces with brows furrowed as they studied the green footprints. "They're still wet!" "The leprechauns must have walked in paint." "oh maybe they came in by the window." One child in particular spent around 5 minutes just studying the footprints. Wow! we were really using those inquiry skills.

After the leprechaun's visit we read many books to learn more about the creatures. Did you know if you catch a leprechaun he has to tell you where he hid his pot of gold? It's leprechaun law. We set about trying to catch a leprechaun. We decided to make a trap. But how would we know what to do?  We made a chart of what we know about leprechauns. We found we actually knew quite a lot! We used this info to make a plan about what to include in our trap. We knew leprechauns liked the color green, loved gold, shamrocks and rainbows so we found way to include all these things.

The kids thought it was important to have something fall on the leprechaun so he couldn't escape. I found a laundry basket and we figured out how to prop it up with a small broom. We wanted the leprechaun to fall into something so we chose a small green garbage can. One of my girls thought we needed something sticky inside so we added tape to the bottom of the can. We scattered gold and shamrocks around to lead the leprechauns in and a few kiddos worked together to build a staircase out of legos. We used our shamrock sign from the lucky charms we left to invite the leprechaun back. One child let me use her collage rainbow to add a bit more color.

We waited all afternoon but no leprechaun came. Imagine our surprise when we came to school the next day to find our room looking like this!

What a mess! The leprechauns left us this note:



and a special treat we all enjoyed together at lunch. Happy St. Patrick's Day!