St. Patrick’s Day Plans?
Posted by Sharon M. Tresino on 16 Mar 2009 | Posted in: Holiday and Seasonal, Student Activities
With the last name of Murphy, I’m accustomed to thinking of St. Patrick’s Day as if it’s a national holiday. I grew up believing that it’s not enough to wear a wee bit of green on the 17th—it’s best to dress in green from head to toe. But this year as I celebrate, I feel slightly out of sorts. I got married last month, and my good ol’ Irish name has been replaced with “Tresino”—100% Italian. At first I wondered how goofy I would look wearing my “Everyone loves an Irish girl” T-shirt when my last name is Italian. But then I decided to look at it this way: deep down I will always be an Irish girl. It’s just that now I get to celebrate my husband’s Italian roots, too. Bring on the pasta!
So will you and your students also be covered in green this St. Paddy’s Day? Did you sprinkle your lesson plans with shamrocks and leprechauns? I’m curious to know how big of a deal this one-day holiday is in your classroom.
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When I taught Kindergarten, we would get a bag of plain white rocks that you use for garden cover and spraypaint them gold. Then my assistant and I took the rocks onto the playground and buried them in the sand. (I don’t remember where we got this idea…) The next day, we told a story about how the leprechaun had been to school and had buried his gold. They dug for DAYS to find the gold and were SO excited as they found them!! Some days it turned into a math lesson as they counted and compared the “gold” they had found. Although this wasn’t the intent, it was definitely a wonderful extention!! We also made Magic Pudding. The Jello brand pistachio pudding looks like a white powder until you add the milk, then - MAGIC!! - the powder turns green! I usually had my students measure their own powder and milk into the little snack-size ziplock containers, then shake, shake, shake!! We also used Nilla Wafers and frosted them with lemon frosting for gold coins for their snack. Such FUN!!!
This was my 30th year of teaching and my student’s favorite day of the year is always St. Patrick’s Day! I begin the ’season’ by reading lots of books about leprechauns and Irish Folklore. I am known to have a bit of blarney myself and every year I tell the kids stories of growing up and having a green breakfast due to the trickery of the angry leprechauns who escaped the traps my 6 siblings and I had set. I tell them my own children now set the traps and that I will bring in the green breakfast to show and share with them. So each year I bring in my green pancake batter and make shamrock shaped pancakes for all the kids. While I am cooking, they make leprechaun masks and illustrate a picture of a leprechaun which I include in my classroom book, Mrs. O’Fuller’s Leprechauns Through the Years. I love sharing the book with the children each year and reminiscing about some of the students I have had. I wonder every year how many of them are also thinking of the Irish teacher they had long ago who made them the green pancakes!
I, too, mess up the classroom and have footprints taped to the wall. At the end of the footprints is a note from the little guy. There is also a clue which results in a hunt for his pot of gold. We follow the clues and the result is a black pot filled with candy. Some years I have used gold chocolate coins. This year I found lollipops with candy wrappers that looked like dollar bills.
The children love solving this mystery. Immediately after they arrive and remove their coats, they begin cleaning up the room and asking all kinds of questions. Lots of fun!
St. Patrick’s Day is a great way to celebrate learning in your classroom! Students really enjoyed creating and sharing their Leprechaun Traps and wearing as much green as they could! We made “Leprechaun Catcher Badges”,decorated leprechaun puppets for a Leprechaun Reader’s Theater,wrote notes to the leprechauns that tricked us ( our very own Lenny and Lisa Leprechaun), and sorted/graphed Lucky Charms!
Hope everyone had a lucky St. Patrick’s Day!!!
Each year my students are surprised and shocked to find our classroom has been visited by a leprechaun! The tiny little guy leaves quite a mess. He tips over chairs, spills pencil cans and book buckets on the floor and he always manages to find the green paint and leave little green footprints on the work tables and my lesson plans. He also loves to turn the chidren’s pictures upsidedown. The students walk around the classroom shaking their heads at his trickery. I love watching them as they begin to clean up and put our room back together without being asked. The leprechaun always leaves a coloring sheet, with his footprint on the corner, a shamrock, and two pieces of gold for each student. The “gold” is Rolo’s candy. Each student has one on their desk. After the room is cleaned up the students can eat their treat and color the paper, which has the footprint to prove his visit to the classroom.
I don’t know where the idea come from but, for the past several years I have made “Leprechaun ladders” with my 4 year old preschoolers. We alternate precut construction paper shamrocks with a short piece of straw on a piece of yarn to your desired length. (I use 7 shamrocks and 6 pieces of straw and don’t forget to tie a knot at the end of the yarn and start and end with a shamrock shape.) I send them home the night before St. Patty’s Day with a note to the parents explaining that Leprechauns like to climb and that when they do, they leave behind a white powder (baby powder or flour or cornstarch) to show the children that there had been a Leprechaun on the ladder. I understand that some parents have gotten carried away with the powder and that their Leprechauns made quite a mess in past years. We hang one in our classroom too and it is fun to watch the children’s reactions when they come in, in the morning and hear their stories of their experiences at home.
**My curriculum specialist found this idea and I thought it was great!
Leprechaun Traps!!
On St. Patrick’s Day, students will design and construct original leprechaun traps!! Items such as shoe boxes, paper towel tubes, aluminum foil, craft sticks, yarn are provided and the kids’ innovative minds go to work! After construction, students will set their traps just before leaving to go home. After all, St. Patrick’s Day is a leprechaun’s busiest day of the year, and they are certain to catch one!!
On the day after St. Patrick’s Day, however, they soon realize that their leprechaun traps have been tampered with! When students enter the classroom, they quickly find a trail of gold dust (glitter). They follow the path from the door of the classroom and discover it goes by each student’s desk and around all the leprechaun traps. The path of gold dust ends with a note written in teeny tiny handwriting by Lucky the Leprechaun! The note will comment on how clever the traps were, but [points out that] the students still couldn’t catch him. Although they did not catch the leprechaun, they will be surprised to find a gold nugget (spray painted rocks) for each of them left behind by Lucky himself!!
It would certainly be entertaining to see what they create and writing could easily be incorporated as a “How To Catch a Leprechaun”.
St. Patrick’s day is a big deal at our preschool. We start by setting a trap for him and bait it with his favorite snack (this year it was cheese curls)!
When the children arrive tomorrow, that pesky leprechaun will have played a trick on us, the room will be totally rearranged! The circle rug will be were the tables were, the housekeeping area is switched with the puppet area etc… And all the chairs are mixed up! We know it was the leprechaun because the whole room is sprinkled with shamrocks! Of course he was too fast for our trap but we do usually catch his hat! We look all over the room for his pot of gold, too! He always leaves a special treat for us,(Lucky Charms!)
I love St. Patrick’s Day. I tell all of my students, that on St. Patrick’s Day we are all Irish Americans. I call them by their last names and it’s fun to watch the “light” come on when they get it. Ex. Mrs. O’Potts, Mr. O’Garcia, Miss O’Troxell
Mr. O’Luna, Mr.O’Nguyen, Miss O’Matthews, Mr. O’Davis, Miss O’Sanchez, etc.
St. Patrick’s Day was a VERY big deal in my classroom, Sharon. I’m retired now and this is the first March 17th that I am not helping pre-schoolers decorate shamrocks and make special headgear for the party on the day. I loved the special little songs and ditties from the Mailbox and the crafts as well. In the last few years that I taught the Mailbox was my #1 resource–I had to keep things fresh and new to keep MY interest going after 20 years. We all wore green and had a special Show and Tell: Some- thing Green. I played Irish music that week and we tried some “step-dancing”. One year we made tambourines with a big shamrock on them to help keep the rhythm. I always asked for special paper products and snack on that day. I had a nice flannelboard leprechaun story about making realistic wishes and we painted rainbows, big and small. There was much more in the total of 24 years– I wouldn’t have missed St. Patrick’s Day for anything!!