Happy St. Patrick's Day!

What a day! This morning I arrived at work and had a grade level meeting with my co-teacher and the other two teachers that make up the K2 team. After our meeting we started discussing how we should set the classroom up for the students when they walked in. I did a similar type of celebration last year but this celebration outdid the last year's and probably those to come. We royally messed up our classroom. We sprinkled glitter all over the floor, turned chairs upside down, threw toys and manipulatives out of their containers and re-arranged the children s' name tags on their cubbyholes.

We ran down the hall and hid in the toddler classroom to view the reactions of the students when they arrived. The first student that arrived didn't know what to do or think. She slowly approached the classroom as she had seen the first classroom on the floor trashed. She walked to hang her bag and noticed that the names were out of order. She was still hesitant to walk into the classroom. She finally went inside and came out to look for the teachers. She wanted to know what had happened. As more students started to arrive the other students greeted them in the hallway and told them of what was to come. They all yelled that the leprechaun had done it and they tried to find him. They looked high and low, and in-between. The desperately wanted to find the culprit. After a while of seeing students totally stunned and tons of pictures taken, we asked the children to clean up the classroom and get ready for a normal day of school.

The fun wasn't over yet. When the students went up to the playground we had another note written from the "leprechaun" and strategically placed it were we knew they would find it. The note told them of the leprechaun's tricks and alerted them that they would be going on a scavenger hunt to find the gold coins that he had left behind. They ran around frantically trying to find all of the coins in the classroom. I had to go and get some others because I couldn't remember how many that I had eaten. I wanted it to equal 30 so that all of the children could have 2 coins to take home.

After that we ate the cookies that the children made yesterday and drank milk that miraculously turned green after shaken it. The children had a blast and ending up writing letters to the leprechaun and hiding them around the room. They will never ever forget this experience as long as they know that St. Patrick's Day is approaching. I must pat myself and fellow K2 teachers on the back for a job well done. Amazing!! Until next time...be good to yourself and each other!!