Happy St. Patrick's Day! These photos are from when Nicole was in my class six years ago.
This was one of the most fun days in my classroom. I dipped a tiny foot shaped sponge in green paint and made footprints all over the room. Then I dumped treasure such as pennies and gold trinkets and shamrocks on the floor. The students tracked the leprechaun right to the bathroom, where they noticed green footprints on the toilet paper and on the toilet seat. You should have heard the squeals when they noticed a drop of green food coloring in the toilet. That was the number one thing they wanted to show their parents. The leprechaun used their toilet!
I placed a paper leprechaun (mouth cut out) over a green soda bottle and gave the children different lengths of beads to "feed" the green guy. This requires concentration, and hand-eye coordination.
We made a trap for our leprechaun and I recorded the childrens' responses on paper to these questions: Where will YOU keep the leprechaun if you catch him? What green things will you feed him? Funny answer: "You know that secret place where Daddy hides his money from Mom?"
Then the kids cut strips and pasted them to make a rainbow on their papers which they had scribbled green. I glued a photo of their face onto a paper leprechaun and they were delighted to discover theirs in the hall.
