Tuesday, February 16, 2016

The Naughty Leprechaun


Oh friends, I am so, SO excited I get to celebrate St. Patrick's Day with my class this year! For the last several years we have always been on spring break when St. Patrick's rolls around.  In fact, the last time I blogged about St. Patty's day was 2012! You can read that post HERE, but I've come a long way since then! 

This year, St. Patrick's Day is the day before spring break! The perfect time to have lots of fun! We'll be leading up to the big day with a special story - The Naughty Leprechaun Story


We'll read the tale of the two brothers and learn all about consequences, making good choices, and having morals. The book focuses on creating your own luck through hard work and determination and not relying on random chance. It's full of beautiful, funny illustrations and I know my students will love it. Then for three nights, our classroom will get a special little visitor. 


Will it be Liam the good or Leyland the naughty? My  class will get to decide if they have had good behavior. Then, on the fourth day - we'll have our  celebration! And when our celebration is over - SPRING BREAK! 

The Naughty Leprechaun story came with a gorgeous gold coin with one brother on each side. We'll leave it out each night showing our choice of visitor. Here are some ideas for each brother: 



I am hoping that on the last night, my students choose a visit from Liam. If they don't, I'll certainly try to persuade them that way. He'll be leaving them everything they need for a classroom celebration - craft stupplies to make leprechaun hats to wear and rainbow stained glass art for our windows, a leprechaun movie, and a special breakfast snack of lucky charms and green milk! 

I'd love to hear how you celebrate St. Patrick's Day in the classroom! 

You can find The Naughty Leprechaun Story - 

Would you like to win your own copy of the Naughty Leprechaun Story? Enter below! 

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This is a sponsored post. I received payment, trade and/or product  in exchange for promoting.
However, all opinions stated are my own and I only promote products I love.





Tuesday, February 2, 2016

100 Days Smarter

100 Down! 80 more to go....

We kept our 100th Day celebrations fairly simple as my Kindergartners need high structure, and a change in routine can throw off our day. We did however, inject some 100th day fun into our normal schedule whenever possible. 

During reading we read "The Night Before the 100th Day" and my students shared their projects with the class. They had some amazing collections! These are just a few. 



We learned a poem about the 100th Day and added it to our reading notebooks. This is from Kindergarten Smiles' Poetry Pack. 



During writing we read "Wilfred Gordon McDonald Partridge" and my students wrote about what they might be like when they are 100. 



During math we played race to 100. This game is super simple. The kids took turns rolling the dice, counting how many dots they rolled, then we colored in that many spaces on our 100s chart, counting all the way up to 100. 


Finally, we made our 100th day Trail Mix. 


Our mix consisted of Cheerios, Chex, Froot Loops, Marshmallows, Raisinettes, M&Ms, Goldfish, Skittles, Gummy Bears, and Pretzels. 


I set up 10 stations around the room with paper plates. Each plate had a different snack on it. 


The kids each had a placemat at their table and in a 'controlled chaos' method, filled their placemats with ten pieces of snack from each plate. 


I set some ground rules first - no running, no crowding around plates or pushing to get near one, and you must return your ten items to your placemat before going to another plate.  They did AWESOME with this, even my room mom was impressed. They were super quiet - focused on counting out ten of each item and returning it to their placemats. 


Once they had their placemat filled, my room mom and I double checked that they had ten of each (and that they got all ten snacks, no doubles) then I wrote their name on a baggie, had them fill the baggie with their snacks, and then stapled the label on. Super simple!