Happy St. Patrick's Day!

                                     

What a better way to motivate your students than a READING RAFFLE!!! You can host one if your students are feeling *lucky!!* on St. Patrick's Day or you can have a celebration if they are doing a great job in guiding reading or reading workshop. We actually used the reading raffle as part of the Bookworm Party, to celebrate the birthday of Dr. Suess earlier this month! You can find more info about the Bookworm Party here.

Not quite ready to say bye-bye to that sneaky leprechaun yet? Have your students complete this activity tomorrow:

Print this up here!

Today we were in a hot pursuit of that pesky leprechaun and started our search by drafting up a Leprechaun Trap Bluprint. This is when we talked about how we were going to build our traps using the items we brought to school:

Then...on to the building (the best part!):

 

Looking for a fun idea that will really get your students wondering?! Print off a LARGE red shamrock (or, use a large shamrock die cut if your school has one) and glue it to the left side of a sheet of white construction paper. Have your students stare at the center of the shamrock for about 30 seconds and then look at the white part of the paper...a green, glowing shamrock will appear! Why? Because the part of our eye that senses the colors red and green share a nerve path to tell your brain what color they are seeing. Staring at the red clover makes this part of their eye works extra hard to tell their brain to see red. By the time they look at the white part of the paper this part of the eye is all worn out, leaving the part that sees green to do all the work. This "seeing green" will only last a few seconds...just enough time to have the red part get a second wind!

The best part of the leprechaun "visit" today? The little shoes he left behind!!

So cute!!!!

(made by spray painting a pair of baby shoes green and adding gold glitter while the paint is still wet!)