St. Patty's Day Activities

I don't know about you all, but I am BEAT!  This past week has been rough.  In year round, we are just about end our third quarter. So I have been plugging away with quarterly assessment, running records {HOLY COW, some of those were hard to get through... I've got all the books memorized}, report cards, and preparing for parent conferences.  On top of all of that, we must make school fun.

When I taught Kindergarten I used to have "Lenny Leprechaun" come visit our classroom.  He was a feisty little guy who liked to mess up our room.  Now that I look back, it was fun, but I'm not into cleaning up my own mess anymore.  In first grade there is not much time for that sort of stuff.  Instead we did a couple other things while still keeping in the spirit on St. Patty's Day.

Our science unit of solids and liquids helps us to explore Oobleck and Dr. Seuss at the same time.  We read his book and made the Oobleck green.  The kids really loved it and I am proud of myself because this year was a lot less messier than past years.  There wasn't any on the carpet this time!  *pats self on back*

In math, we are pulling teeth teaching how to tell time by the hour and half hour.  In order to make it less painful I introduced a basic lesson first.  Most already knew how to tell time and others did not.  We began by making the hands on a clock and then making all the parts and discussing how much time goes by {5 minutes in between each number, the hour hand, and the minute hand}.

I made up a silly story that goes something like this...


“On the way to school this morning, I saw a little green man on the side of the road. He was waving his hand at me and calling “Mrs. Smith... Mrs. Smith, I’ll give you a hand! I’ll give you a hand!” and he gave me these green hands. He told me what to do with them and I told him I would try it. I don’t know how he knew we would be learning how to tell time today. He said that his magic in these hands would help all of you to learn how to tell time. So, this is what he said to do. (Glue the hands up at this time. After gluing them up continue with the story.) What do you think this is supposed to be? A clock, how is this silly clock going to help us tell time? Oh I see! (Continue with the lesson by numbering the hands, etc.)”

Now, I should say that I almost laughed out loud but I held it in... there is a student I have who will tell us right out that she does not believe in Santa OR the Easter Bunny, but she DOES believe in leprechauns.  :)

Here is the clock we made with the hands and the work page they used with it.  I would call out a time and they had to draw the time on their clocks.  They did great too!