The Luck of The Giraffes!

This week we celebrated St. Patrick's Day by embracing what makes us lucky

The giraffes got together with the Elephants for some Safari Time and created these Lucky Shamrocks. Each student wrote down four things they were lucky to have in their life, and our challenge was to try and think of some things that were not "things"! Many of us wrote about our friends and family, going to school, and even our ability to be happy. 

On Friday, we created leprechaun traps to try and catch a bit more luck! We could only choose from a small list of supplies from the Shamrock Shop, and we only had $5 to spend. In all, we had about 45 minutes to create our budget/supply list, shop for supplies, and build our traps, so we had to work quickly! 

After creating our "budget sheet" and buying our supplies, we got to work creating our traps!

Here are a few of our traps/homes, which are currently scattered around the classroom in hopes of luring in some lucky little leprechauns:

We can't wait to see what is in our classroom on Monday! 

UPDATE: We had one tiny little visitor over the weekend who left us some luck dust and some yummy treats!

Thank you Leroy! 

Finding Gold

Last Friday, Leroy McClumsy came to school  St. Patrick's Day to thank us for using our math skills to help him find his lost pot of gold, but the giraffes weren't there! Ms. Riley thanked Leroy for his gifts and he wrote a letter to say thank you to the giraffes. We were excited to find his surprise on Monday when we returned to school!

Sláinte!

We had lots of fun learning about the holiday St. Patrick's Day this week! St. Patrick's Day is an Irish holiday that celebrates the feast day of St. Patrick (March 17th), who is the patron saint of Ireland. 

We are very lucky to have a family member of the giraffe class who is from Ireland, so we were able to learn a bit more about the life of St. Patrick and how he arrived in Ireland. We also learned about how this holiday is celebrated there--all schools and businesses are closed, and big parades are held (many places around the U.S. hold parades as well!). It is customary to pick shamrock and pin it to your clothing, like a boutineer. 

After we learned about the history of St. Patrick's Day and about its celebrations, we listened to Celtic music while we set to work creating some stained glass shamrocks!

Friends were working so carefully on their shamrocks that many of us were not yet able to finish. But those who did were able to transform their paper into stained glass using cooking oil.

On Thursday, we also got a visit from Sprinkles O'Shea, who was just about to leave the classroom when Ms. Riley arrived at school! She begged him to stay and visit with the giraffes, but he had to be on his way to make a few more deliveries (and cause a bit more mischief-- we are STILL trying to clean up all that glitter, Sprinkles!!)

He left us a teeny little note along with a basket of goodies. At our morning meeting, we read our note and counted up the candy, and we figured out how we could divide it evenly among all of the giraffes. 

While it was a short day for the giraffes, we still got to have some fun by learning our Leprechaun Names and making some portraits of a leprechaun. We ran out of time before we could paint our portraits, but we will finish painting on Monday! 

I hope all of the giraffes enjoyed our celebrations at school, and I hope you all have a wonderful long weekend.

Sláinte!

Sprinkles O'Shea Spreads St. Patrick's Day Cheer!

On St. Patrick's Day, the giraffe class visited in the wee hours of the morning by Sprinkles O'Shea, who is one of Ms. Riley's many leprechaun friends. He also left us a wee little note (and some surprises on our desks!) before posing for a few pictures and running off to spread his mischief, luck, and cheer across the land :) 

The note led us on a wild scavenger hunt across our classroom and across the school! We figured out each of Sprinkles' riddles, which eventually led us right back to our classroom to our treasure. 

Just look at that sea of green go!

Sprinkles left us a basket O'Skittles and another little note to congratulate us and wish us a Happy St. Patrick's Day! 

Afterwards, we brainstormed a list of who's and what's we were lucky for, and wrote them down on shamrocks for our bulletin board. We also figured out our leprechaun name by using a handy dandy name converter! You can figure out your leprechaun name as well by clicking here

May you all experience the luck of the Irish this St. Patrick's Day!