St. Patrick's Day is always a magical time for our students. The little leprechaun that comes to visit our classroom adds so much fun and excitement to an engaging week of learning.
Some of my favorite books to read with the kids during this week include:
Everyone knows that if you want to catch a leprechaun, you have to find one and the best way to do that is to look at the end of a rainbow. But where can we find a rainbow? How are they made? What type of weather do we need to see a rainbow? This simple science experiment is a great way to begin investigating these answers. All you need is a dark room, a small mirror, a glass of water, and a flashlight. Place the mirror in the cup of water and shine the flashlight at the mirror. A rainbow will appear on your wall or ceiling. You can see each of the bands of light and it is fascinating! This is one of my students drawings of the different color bands.
Some other great resources to check out for videos about this topic is the StoryBots episode: Why is the Sky Blue? (There is a part where an artist shows the different colors of light). Astronomer Amy from Ready, Jet, Go also has a nice clip about prisms and how they work.
Learning about rainbows cannot be complete without the Skittles science experiment. It is so fun and easy. All you need to do it put the skittles in a circle around a plate, pour water on top, and watch the magic happen!
The leprechaun is a pretty tricky little guy and likes to visit our classroom while my students are away. Last year he left ingredients for a shamrock shake, fun leprechaun rocks, and even peed in our toilet. Well, only because we asked him to… lol. This is a great opportunity for a little letter writing practice. We tried to catch him, but unfortunately we were unsuccessful. Maybe next year...
Leprechaun rocks are super easy to make. All you need is gold coins, baking soda, water, and green food coloring. Check out the Gift of Curiosity's blog post on how to make these. When the leprechaun drops off these rocks, make sure to leave "water" in a bottle next to them... The last trick is that the water is actually vinegar.
So fun!
Shamrock Shakes are easy to make and so cute! We put a little green food coloring on the bottom of our cups, added a scoop of vanilla ice cream, poured Sprite on top, and then added rainbow sprinkles on top.
And to top off our fun, we even had some St. Patrick's Day math interactive notebooks.
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| You can find these in my Teachers Pay Teachers store if you are interested |
Happy St. Patrick's Day!
