St. Patrick's Day with My Little Leprechauns!

I hope you had a festive St. Patrick's Day!  My kiddos were so excited yesterday.  One of them came to school decked out with green glasses and leprechaun hat antennae, carrying a pot of gold, stickers, and books!  She let me use her pot of gold (chocolate coins) as rewards for the kids throughout the day!  She read one of her books to the class and I read the other.

We did a few festive activities yesterday, and we will be doing a few more each day this week.  I will break it down for you by content area.

First off, we have math.  My kindergarten kiddos are working on 3 digit addition (no regrouping yet).  To make it a little more fun, I put the problems on a themed paper.

Last week we learned how to find missing addends.  As a review, I made some themed math games for them to play when they finish their papers.

I found this one on abcteach.com, but it was several years ago.  I wrote the problems on it with a wet erase marker, so I can change it out for many different skills.  They roll a die and move that many spaces.  In order to stay on their space they have to find the missing addend.

This game is from Teresa Evans at teachersnotebook.com.  The kiddos roll a die.   They figure out what they have to add to their number to make 10, and then move to that number on the board.  For example: I roll a 6.  6+4=10, so I move to the number 4.

We are making words this week in phonics.  I found some great worksheets that have the letters for the kids to cut out and everything!  So much easier than sorting letters for a making words activity.  They have time to come up with words on their own and then we work together to make more.  Thanks to Christina DeCarbo for this great activity!

In literacy centers this week they have some themed activities as well.  My firsties are working on even/odd numbers, so they have a number sort in the math center.

In poetry center, they always have a poem to add to their notebooks, highlight the word wall words, and illustrate (and of course read over and over again).  This week it was a poem from a leprechaun.

In the listening center they are doing a March book report.  This could also be used for the read to self center.  Thanks to Faith Wheeler for this freebie!

In the spelling center they are rainbow writing their spelling words, because we all know that you find a leprechaun's pot of gold at the end of a rainbow!

For writing this week, they are responding to prompts, as well as working with graphic organizers. Yesterday they wrote about what they would do if they found a leprechaun's pot of gold.  Several of them said they would share it, which I thought was sweet.

"If I had a leprechaun pot of gold I would give it to my friends whenever I sended letters."

"I would catch a leprechaun and get the pot of gold and give some to my sister and keep the rest of it on my shelf."

Tomorrow we are writing about the things that make us feel lucky.  We will also be filling in bubble maps this week to show what we learned about rainbows and leprechauns.  

We will wrap up the week with a little science and do a rainbow experiment.  Using milk, dish soap, and food coloring we will create a rainbow in the classroom.  I will post a picture after we try it so you can see how it works.  Come back to check it out!