Terabith Posted March 12, 2023 Share Posted March 12, 2023 It's my first year back teaching preschool in a few years, and St. Patrick's Day is coming up. I'm teaching older 2's and 3's this year. My previous assignment was younger 2's, and while the younger 2's often got lumped in with the nursery for planning purposes and holiday things, the older 2's/ 3's get lumped in with the older kids. And apparently St. Patrick's Day is a whole deal. I have one kid with autism, and a whole slew of kids who are fairly newly potty trained. Recently, blue cleanser was in the school toilets, and it was a whole deal. The kids were really rather freaked out about it. So honestly, while dyeing the toilet water green is a whole thing, apparently, I'd really prefer we not do that. Leprechauns apparently visit preschool classes (covered in paint? honestly, the logic behind this is lacking to me) and leave footprints and cause Elf on the Shelf level shenanigans. But again, I have a kid with autism, and if chairs are overturned or other chaos is there, there will be consequences. So I'm trying to think of an alternative. I originally thought our leprechaun could bring us a book, but I'm having trouble finding a St. Patrick's Day themed book that is short and simple enough to really work for my crew. And also, I'm feeling a little poor, because we're giving a lot of money to Afghani refugees in our town, and also have a kid in college. So now I'm thinking maybe the leprechaun could bring a treat? Maybe cookies or something? (Dyed green? Are all leprechauns Catholic? I guess that would make sense with St. Patrick.) Or maybe they could bring the dinosaur eggs I was thinking of hatching as a class project? (Baking soda, water, and food coloring making a shell around little dollar store dinosaurs that are frozen and kids can thaw with vinegar and basters?). What says the hive? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HomeAgain Posted March 12, 2023 Share Posted March 12, 2023 Maybe a book about rainbows? You can have a small treat for the kids (gold coin from the party store?) after a small hunt to find the leprechaun's gold at the end of the rainbow. I'd work in something like the Bear Hunt, where kids need to go over, under, around, through...all the prepositions in some sort of rhyme. They might like making their own rainbow to take home, or using the milk/dishsoap/food coloring activity to work on their fine motor skills and make colors move. 5 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kidlit Posted March 12, 2023 Share Posted March 12, 2023 I'm a children's librarian and I do Storytime twice a week, and my crowds skew pretty young. Instead of focusing on St Patrick's Day, I'm reading the picture book Good Luck Bear by Greg Foley (cute book about a bear and his friend mouse looking for four leaf clovers) and Green by Laura Vacaro Seeger (concept book about shades of green with die cut pages--won a Caldecott honor). I always have a craft because the precedent was set before me, but honestly the moms mostly do the crafts due to the age of the kids. I do try to make it something that the kids CAN do (those who are closer to preschool age than toddlerhood) with help. For this week I copied outlines of a four leaf clover on cardstock. I cut out little squares of different shades of green tissue paper. The children will scrunch those into little balls/wads and fill up the shamrock outline with the shades of green using school glue. We have our standing songs we sing. I might look for something about St Patrick's Day to sing, but I'm leaning toward keeping up "Let's Go Fly a Kite" from Mary Poppins (using scarves for our kites) for the rest of March. It was a hit last week! another idea I had when I was at Trader Joe's was to buy a pot of shamrocks to share with them, but I decided my participants are generally too young to notice. Hope this helps! 7 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wishes Posted March 12, 2023 Share Posted March 12, 2023 My children loved this book. All the chaos of the leprechaun, but not in your classroom. https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/533154/the-gingerbread-man-and-the-leprechaun-loose-at-school-by-laura-murray-illustrated-by-mike-lowery/ 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kidlit Posted March 12, 2023 Share Posted March 12, 2023 19 minutes ago, HomeAgain said: Maybe a book about rainbows? You can have a small treat for the kids (gold coin from the party store?) after a small hunt to find the leprechaun's gold at the end of the rainbow. I'd work in something like the Bear Hunt, where kids need to go over, under, around, through...all the prepositions in some sort of rhyme. They might like making their own rainbow to take home, or using the milk/dishsoap/food coloring activity to work on their fine motor skills and make colors move. We had a local author come read her book that centered around colors and the rainbow a few weeks ago. Our craft that week was cutting small squares/rectangles from strips of construction paper to make a rainbow collage on a rainbow outline on cardstock. I must like squares of color. Lol 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Terabith Posted March 12, 2023 Author Share Posted March 12, 2023 We are also painting a shamrock that I cut out of cardstock with watercolors and then stamping with tempera paints with marshmallows. But we'll probably do that on Thursday, so they can take them home on Friday. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Drama Llama Posted March 12, 2023 Share Posted March 12, 2023 I am pretty sure that leprechauns have library cards, so they could borrow some books for you and turn some the books in your class library upside down or backwards which is actually a really great early concept of print thing. Maybe some new gold coins for dramatic play? 1 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Starr Posted March 12, 2023 Share Posted March 12, 2023 https://www.the-best-childrens-books.org/st-patricks-day-kids.html Not sure if any of these will work for your crew. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Spryte Posted March 12, 2023 Share Posted March 12, 2023 Library books! Leprechauns might leave trails of Dollar Store foam shamrocks. Or some piles of gold coins. Can they eat Lucky charms? Leprechauns could leave little baggies of Lucky Charms. Green snacks — cookies, whatever. You could act surprised that the cookies turned green, if you want to go that far. Are you making a trap or traps? There’s a cute printable poem out there somewhere about leprechauns turning into potatoes if you catch them. It will transform back and escape the next night. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Terabith Posted March 12, 2023 Author Share Posted March 12, 2023 31 minutes ago, Spryte said: Library books! Leprechauns might leave trails of Dollar Store foam shamrocks. Or some piles of gold coins. Can they eat Lucky charms? Leprechauns could leave little baggies of Lucky Charms. Green snacks — cookies, whatever. You could act surprised that the cookies turned green, if you want to go that far. Are you making a trap or traps? There’s a cute printable poem out there somewhere about leprechauns turning into potatoes if you catch them. It will transform back and escape the next night. I think the older classes are making traps, but I'm not going to. Our Dollar Store had moved onto Easter stuff by the time I went and looked for St. Patrick's Day stuff, two weeks ago. It's super annoying. Green snacks are a great idea, and I've requested several books from the library. The Green book mentioned looks especially great. Of course leprechauns have library cards! Brilliant! 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ausmumof3 Posted March 12, 2023 Share Posted March 12, 2023 https://readaloudrevival.com/picture-books-for-march/ We liked some of the picture book suggestions in this list. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wendyroo Posted March 12, 2023 Share Posted March 12, 2023 Roy G Biv is a fun They Might be Giants song about the colors of the rainbow that stars a leprechaun. Plus it hits on a little bit of science, a lit bit of phonemic awareness, and it is highly danceable. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
almondbutterandjelly Posted March 13, 2023 Share Posted March 13, 2023 We always do green rice Krispy treats for St. Patrick’s Day. Green kool aid can be fun. I think it’s a lemon lime flavor. A craft: You can make shamrocks by gluing three green hearts together, left, center, and right. We enjoy the veggie tale video about St. Patrick. It’s probably on YouTube. One year I had a trail of gold coins leading to something. A different year, I did a tiny scavenger hunt. I think it might have been following gold coins to the first clue. There is a chipmunks version of the song My Wild Irish Rose. Bing Crosby has some great songs. Who threw the overalls in Mrs. Murphy’s chowder? Is funny. I don’t remember if it would be age appropriate 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Terabith Posted March 13, 2023 Author Share Posted March 13, 2023 Videos are out, because I don't do screens. I figure they get enough of those at home. And it's on Friday; I don't have time to teach them a whole folk song. We are singing "Lukey's Boat Is Painted Green," so maybe that can be festive? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kidlit Posted March 13, 2023 Share Posted March 13, 2023 5 hours ago, wendyroo said: Roy G Biv is a fun They Might be Giants song about the colors of the rainbow that stars a leprechaun. Plus it hits on a little bit of science, a lit bit of phonemic awareness, and it is highly danceable. Thanks for sharing! I'm going to look this one up. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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