St. Patrick’s Day

Happy St. Patty’s Day to ya! And welcome back from March Break! I have never felt so rejuvenated and ready to get back to school. March Break was spent exercising at the gym, getting back into healthy eating habits, going to an Arcade Fire concert, and getting ADDICTED to House of Cards. We actually spent 10 hours on Saturday watching episode after episode. We were hooked.

Anyways, back to school…

When I came back to the classroom this morning, a leprechaun had already been by! The desks were all turned so that the openings were closed in, he wrote all over our white board, rearranged our number line, and threw papers all over the floor! He continued this nonsense all day whenever the kids and I were out at recess or lunch. What a rascal!

You see, last year I took a trip to Ireland with some friends and I can’t be sure, but I suspect it snuck into my bag and came back to Canada. Havoc was wreaked last year after I got back, so I told the kids that the leprechaun probably hid out somewhere all year, just waiting to come back out on his special day.

Perhaps this is where I smuggled a leprechaun (accidentally)

This is what it must feel like to be a tiny little leprechaun

We decided to play along with the leprechaun and celebrate his special day. We wore lots of green, we read a funny poem, and did some Lucky Charms graphing.

When they weren’t working on math or literacy tasks, they were trying their darndest to catch the leprechaun with homemade traps.

I wanted to know what they felt lucky to have, so we wrote them down on foam shamrocks and made this cute little hallway display.

At the end of the day, while the kids were in library, our leprechaun left us a farewell note. Now we know for sure that he won’t likely return until St. Patrick’s Day 2015.

Now I really want to go back to Ireland…

TGIMB

Thank God It’s March Break!

I didn’t post last week (sorry) so I’ll catch you up on a few things. We started a new unit on poetry, where our big idea is: “What do the words make you see?”

(oops, my number line is a tad crooked)

We want the kids to be able to read a poem many different times for many different purposes, and respond to it through art. We are also placing a strong focus on rhyming words.

A fabulous Pinterest find for my writing centre

We started the unit with this fun poem:

The Monster

I thought I saw a monster

Underneath my bed---

His tongue was yellow

And his eyes were red.

I thought I saw a monster

Underneath my chair---

His face was purple

And he had pink hair.

I thought I saw a monster

In my room last night---

His legs were orange

And his feet were white.

I thought I saw a monster

And that he saw me---

But don’t tell my mother

She’ll be scared, you see.

It’s a great one to use for the visualization piece because it has so many adjectives. We actually deleted some words so that the students had to think of what word would rhyme and make sense. {And I'm sorry, I don't remember the source of this poem.}

We also looked at this poem:

Chilly

I’m ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-chilly,

I’m c-c-c-c-c-c-c-c-c-cold,

I’m s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-silly,

Should have worn my c-c-coat like I was told.

Now I’m s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-sorry,

I th-th-th—think I’m going to freeze,

Let me in so I can warm up,

P-p-p-p-p-p-p-p-p-p-PLEASE?

Now it’s s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-snowing,

And my b-b-b-body’s losing heat,

My poor nose is g-g-g-g-g-g-glowing,

And I’ve lost the f-f-feeling in my feet,

How my teeth are ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-chattering

And I think I’m going to s-s-s-s-sneeze,

Let me in so I can warm up,

P-p-p-p-p-p-p-p-p-p-PLEASE?          

-Kaye Umansky

    

This one was tons of fun because it becomes a whole new poem once you read it according to the interesting print. It also led us into another learning goal we want the kids to achieve in this unit: “use better words”.

We are starting this board in our room so the kids can refer to it to actually use these words in their own writing. They love increasing their vocabularies!             

For WEEKS the kids have been begging me to bring back Candy Land. If you don’t remember our Candy Land math unit, you can click HERE to give it a read. It was a great, really engaging math unit all about number patterns.

I also loved Candy Land, but I didn’t want to do the same thing again, so I introduced a restaurant. And they love it.

They need to refer to the menu in order to solve the math problem. The line at the bottom is for their number line, because right now we are learning how to add numbers using a number line.

As for science, here is a picture from last week when we did our food web activity.

During our Friday art period, we read Clever Tom and the Leprechaun and learned about how sneaky those leprechauns can be! Then we made mosaic rainbows because leprechauns hang out near rainbows, after all.

Sadly, only two kids finished because they were obsessed with the idea of a leprechaun and couldn’t stop talking about it!

After a productive math-based PA Day, the beginning of March Break begins! I’m looking forward to a week of sleeping in (which is like, 8:00), going to the gym, and visiting Toronto with Rob.

Have a wonderfully fun and relaxing March Break!