Pots of Gold – Patties Classroom

St. Patrick’s Day Classroom Fun

HERE at Mathwire is a game I tweaked to fit my Leprechaun Day theme . It is a game called Math Parking Lot. I did a few cute graphics on the sides and am calling it Leprechaun Lot. I don’t know what kind of cars they drive, do you?

We did these cute POTS OF GOLD with Rainbows and a leprechaun riding the rainbow. We also wrote about “A Person I Treasure”. They turned out really pretty.

Evan Moore has a cute Leprechaun Shape book that would be a really fun to use for spelling. The words will go on 6 little rainbow paper strips we will make into rings and write each word twice on the front of each ring. And another word twice on the back. They will be able to do 12 words. Then we will hang them up on strings in our room for March. Cute right? HERE at Evan Moore is the shape book link. I just used the front and back and had the kids glue them together with the rings stapled to the bottom. They look cute hanging in our room. I should have taken a picture!

We did another writing assignment this week; we made up funny similes, a type of metaphor, to describe Leprechauns. My sentence frame went like this:

LEPRECHAUNS ARE AS ____________AS A ____________

and as ___________ as a __________. If I caught one I would trap him by…._____________. Then I would ask him for these 3 wishes; ____________, ___________, ____________.

My only directions were that each sentence had to have a describing word as well as each wish. They turned out wonderful!

Here is our Hallway Leprechaun bulletin board

We wrote metaphors….A leprechaun is as sly as a fox!

Then we made leprechaun heads…and glittered the buckles

The kids curled orange butcher paper around their pencils before gluing them down. I like how somebody thought theirs needed a mustache….hehehe…

I gave them each a piece of green glittery shamrocks to add to their hat.

Then we wrote the Leprechaun metaphors….and what we’d do if we caught a leprechaun.

How would YOU TRAP A LEPRECHAUN

Then we wrote what 3 wishes we would wish for….

They were very creative wishes!

Some wished for more than 3 wishes…that’s so tricky!

Here are the Pots of gold and rainbows too.

It’s always a lot of fun on St. Patrick’s Day!

Those nasty leprechauns…..they knocked over chairs, dumped out bins and
packs of crayons and even wrote a misspelled message on our board. Some
kids even found green footprints all over the bathroom sinks!

There is also a TPT St. Patty’s Day prompt writing page that is SUPER CUTE! It is from Kimberly Santana and she gives it out free on her TPT page. Well, we also made LEPRECHAUN TRAPS. Check them on the next post!

A fun 100s day chart to do with St. Patricks Day can be found at Little Country Kinder TPT store. Hope your St. Patty’s Day was filled with rainbows!

$2 Leprechaun Hundreds Chart Hidden Picture Activities for$

St. Patrick’s Day!

Leprechauns and Pots of Gold

Hello, First Graders I’m Lucky I am

I was here and gone as fast as you can

I’m little and tough and so hard to find

so don’t try to catch me just never mind!

I left you some treats In your classroom Sooooooo,

Get busy looking for them, Ready, set, GO!

While my students were at lunch recess, naughty little leprechauns came in and turned over some chairs and made a trail of glitter to my desk. We even saw some green glitter footprints! Did YOU get a visit from a leprechaun today?

Our WEEKLY GRAPH this week was on…..something Irish…..guess what? Of course we graphed our favorite kinds of POTATOES!!. What are yours? We chose from:

French Fries
Mashed Potatoes
Baked Potatoes with butter
Hash Brown Potatoes
Potato Chips

Guess Which one was the Winner?

Writing: Journals- 1. How would you catch a leprechaun? We shared with the class our great ideas. Then we shared our homework….

Leprechaun Traps! We were very inventive!

Mrs. Moss came up with the pots of gold to
“trap” a leprechaun. We only had to design the various “traps”. Then we shared them with the whole school in our school library…..but we took home our pots of gold!

Here was Peter’s trap…very creative “sticky path”

Leprechaun Traps Letter that went home…

Addie’s trap….leprechaun falls through the hole in the “grass” oops!

Emma’s trap….leprechaun climbs up the ladder, slides down the tube! Trapped!

Trace’s trap….climb up the lego ladder, Uh Oh…look out!

Allie entices her leprechaun in with a FREE all you can eat buffet! Too cute!

Then when he gets inside she’s gonna konk him on the head with the cloud covered box! Zowie!

Even though it said Do Not Enter, guess who entered?

Then guess who cut a hole and escaped? Prison Break! Those tricky leprechauns!

Rainbow IDEAS

Mosaic rainbow- Children glue paper squares and cotton ball clouds on to rainbow pattern. Or have kids paint hand prints in all of the colors and in a shape of the rainbow.We also made pots of gold with rainbows attached. Or just cut out white clouds or use a white paper plate folded and add streamers in the 6 colors of the rainbow. Go out and check the wind direction by how your streamers blow.

MATH BINGO

A fun “Lucky” Bingo game I found was at the dltk WEBSITE HERE! I also found some cute art ideas on another Teachers First website. The link is HERE. I made up a bunch of these on light green card stock. If we played the math side of the game I would always say, 6 tens and 3 ones for them to figure out the number. Sometimes I would say it backwards 3 ones and 6 tens. Or I would add ten to a number or subtract 10 from a number and they had to figure it out mentally. The opposite side I did Irish “word bingo”. The kids can do this one again at a center, they will just choose a caller. It’s super fun. They all got into it!

MATH
Another individual and fun math activity is graphing the marshmallow shapes that come in the Lucky Charms cereal. I give each student a little cup of cereal and they graph their shapes on the worksheet. A link to make a copy is HERE. It is from Tooter4kids. I added some math to the page such as add up the horseshoe and heart shapes. Or subtract the least number of shapes you have from the greatest number of shapes. The kids learn the math vocabulary better the more we use it. Are any of your shapes equal in number?

Graphing with Lucky Charms Marshmallow shapes.

Lucky Charms Math ……always fun!

We also made leprechaun wheels with math facts each child wrote down individually. Some students did multiplication facts they want to memorize, others did addition or subtraction facts. My challenge to them was to write down ones they did not already know by heart.

Math facts wheels, some of the kids did Multiplications! Woo Hoo!

SCIENCE
I love to have the kids learn about Roy G. Biv (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet) and the order of the rainbow colors. We look at some glass prisms on the overhead that show rainbows in a cool way. Then we make a rainbow using 1 inch by 10 inch strips of colored construction paper glued together and then glued onto the back of a black pot. We color a tiny leprechaun and I give them some shamrocks. This year I found some cute green blingy/shiny ones from Hobby Lobby, and they glued those down. Then I top the pot with some fake gold coins. Here’s our finished “Pots of Gold” at the ends of the rainbows.

SCIENCE
Make some 3D “Rainbow” glasses. Use cardboard shapes of glasses. I had some I just copied onto card stock. Then give kids some red and blue permanent markers and have them color an “eye” shape that will fit over the glasses out of overhead clear acetate, 1 in blue and 1 in red. Then cut them out and tape them inside the glasses. If you need a tutorial I found one HERE. I’ve bought many 3D books over the years so it’s fun to make these glasses on St. Patrick’s Day. We ran out of time so we’ll have to do them next week.

RAINBOW SCIENCE EXPERIMENT
Another fun science I do is use my beakers and do some “color change” science. A fun experiment is using a bowl of milk and dropping 2 blobs of food coloring into the bowl in 4 different colors. Then take a tiny speck of Dawn dish washing liquid on the end of a toothpick and stick it on the edge of the milk. It should show a fizzy chemical change. Then dot another far corner of the milk. Don’t dot right into the food coloring.
Do it a few more times. You should have about 5 minutes of fizz in the experiment. It’s really cool, easy, and cheap.

This is after about about 5 minutes and a few kids had bumped the bowl…

It will start a chemical reaction that will “fizz” the milk. It’s really a cool rainbow affect. The kids want to go nuts with the toothpick but don’t let them or it ruins the effect. A tiny bit goes a long way and will make the reaction last longer if you stick it in one area of the bowl each minute and then watch and wait.

St. Patrick’s Day Activities

LEPRECHAUN ART
Another art I do some years is a cute leprechaun face. For beards and the hair I have the kids curl the strips of 1/2 inch construction paper around a marker so it will curl up like a Santa beard. The hat is green, then we add a 1 inch strip of black around for the ribbon and a yellow square for a buckle, and add glitter to it after school. Here is our finished bulletin boards.

We curl orange strips for beard and use orange crimped packaging for hair…

Lucky Leprechaun art….dots are stickers…

March bulletin board…. Type up some poems or songs to go on the back…

Gotta love a leprechaun with a rainbow pot of gold…..the more glitter the better!

Handprint painting for the Leprechaun parent cards…

Look Mom! Here’s our hands! (prints that is…)

MUSIC
A fun song we sing is L U C K Y and it is sung just like the B I N G O Song and tune. I know a chap with a fuzzy beard and LUCKY is his name-O. (spell) Lucky, Lucky, Lucky and Lucky is his name-O. He hides his gold at the rainbow’s end and Lucky is his name-O. Lucky Lucky, Lucky and Lucky is his name-O.
This would go great typed up on the back of our giant art leprechauns. I like to do art with poetry and sing or read it for shared reading time. Happy St. Patties Day to you from me!

My grand daughters in their “Lucky” shirts

St. Patrick’s Day Writing Ideas

I like to have my students make a card for somebody they love for almost every holiday. Daily writing practice is so imporant and doing it in a real world way makes it meaningful writing practice for the kids too!

A fun link for coloring pages you can use for the front of parent greeting cards is HERE at Educational Co. It always has some fun coloring pages or if you need black and white clip art and it’s always FREE! Gotta love that! This year I found a package of St. Patrick’s Day stickers at the dollar store. I decided to try a “Leprechaun Hand Print” that turned out cute. Here are our finished St. Patties Day cards.

Kids love choosing their own stationery…

Then I give each student some writing stationery. The kids do their own “sloppy copy” and I edit, then we rewrite our final copies.

Here are the finished handprint cards. Aren’t they super cute? Kids added their own stickers. I got a HUGE package from the dollar store, what a great find!

I’ve collected cute stationery for every holiday.

St. Patrick’s Day Language Arts Activities

Some fun COLOR SONGS can be found at this cute link HERE. Just scroll down to the bottom of the page. I’ve also had the kids do color books at the first of the year to learn their color words. I just have them write a color word a day and write as many things as they can think of that are found in that color.

They came up with cute letters to parents….

I found a really cute leprechaun poem on this website that is printable. The link is HERE. It’s on the First Grade Alacarte blog. It’s got lots of cute stuff.

SCIENCE with ART
I love to have the kids learn about ROY G. BIV (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet) and the order of the rainbow colors. A cute link for some other Roy G. Biv Stuff is We look at some glass prisms on the overhead that show rainbows in a cool way. Then we make a rainbow in a pot!

Here’s our finished “Pots of Gold” at the ends of the rainbows.

Using 1 inch by 10 inch strips of 6 colors of colored construction paper glued together and then glued onto the back of a black pot. We color a tiny leprechaun and I give them some green “blingy” shamrocks. This year I found some cute green shiny ones from Hobby Lobby. Then I top the pot with some fake gold coins topped with glitter of course! Then we wrote some Leprechaun Similes:

Leprechauns are as ____ as a _______ and as ______ as a _______. If I caught one I would __________ and wish for a __________________. The kids sure wished for some fantastic things! These Language Arts Activities are always fun and they turn out so dang pretty!