We used one of our cutting and following directions pages to help us make a leprechaun trap. In our curriculum, we have this page that often proved to be very difficult. I started saving it till March 16 (or so) and the hard thing became something fun. We went from crying about how hard it was to being creative and willing to try! One thing about being in one grade for awhile...you know what the hard parts are for students each year and you can move things around to better time periods. Remember...children develop at different rates. Even by waiting a couple weeks with this activity (which I also did other things to prep toward this), I always had one or two students that still struggled to make this little box...even with me doing it step by step in front of them.
How fun to play with my class! We read the book on March 16 and made our traps...leaving them on their desks. The leprechaun came in in the morning and spread a little mischief.
Looking for the leprechaun and finding gold coins around the room. Discovering a gold coin and candy treat in their trap...and the teacher reading the note from the tricky leprechaun. Notice one little guy's face...he did not like the treat left in his box because it was "not on a stick". He only liked suckers...so he was often disappointed with treats. It was a good lesson to not be so picky because you miss out! By the way, that is a form of control and teacher's need to know that it is ok to not cater to this. Look at the bigger picture! Teach through these opportunities. We started the year with tears and friends trying to fix the situation by asking for a different kind of treat for him. Even birthday treats were tailored to him...which was kind but also enabling. Never let a child manipulate to that degree! By the end of the year, he was more accepting of other treats.
We chose leprechaun names to write on our papers. I wrote them on little sticky notes for the students to copy. They giggled every time the wrote the name or when I called on them using their fun name.
We all wore green and had Lucky Charms for a snack as we sorted the marshmallows on a graph. We did all our regular work...but with fun touches! We used the gold coins to add in Math class.
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