Awesome Leprechaun Traps and Our Ocean Display

Helllllo and Happy Wednesday, oh beautiful ones! What a crrrrazy week this has been! Yesterday we were busy little bees, still learning about the wonders of the ocean! My kids are so into this. It's interesting to see what topics the kids respond to. Last year, my kids were obsessed with our unit on outer space, and not really into ocean animals. This year my kids are going bananas over it! I can't wait to do our space unit. That is one of my favey fave things to teach. Moving on.... After school yesterday I raced to physical therapy where he proceeded to tell me that my knee has tons of built up scar tissue from the surgery. So tomorrow I am going back in (and having to miss school again, UGH) and they are going to put me out again. While I am asleep, they are literally just going to bend my knee and rip all of the scar tissue. Ew ew ew, ow ow ow. Those are the things that were running through my head while he was telling me. I'm hoping it doesn't hurt too bad because I am planning on going back up to school later in the afternoon for the student showcase. It is basically a night when the kids come in with their families and share all of the wonderful things they have been learning about! I just cannot miss it. So I plan on going, even if I have to lay on the ground and roll into school.

 

Now let's get to a little bit of fun :) As I told you on Monday, we have been having so much fun with "The Naughty Leprechaun" story. We even created a graph to vote on which leprechaun we wanted to visit (the nice or the naughty). On Monday they picked the nice leprechaun, so on Tuesday morning they found a magic pot-of-gold full of yummy treats and a new lucky friend waiting for them! He even had a note to explain why he was there :)

 

 

They were so excited about their new friend, who we named Clovers, and were completely determined to catch him when he came to life that night. How lucky it was that the kids all created Leprechaun Traps as their March family project. What a coincidence (hehe)! They turned out SOOO super cute. They had a blast presenting them to the class and explaining exactly how they would work.

 

 

 

 We also had fun with a few more ocean activities from my new Ocean Animals unit! To start out our unit, I had the kids fill out the K and W part of their KWL chart independently. Then, we created a big KWL chart together and the students added ideas that they had written on their paper. This was the first time I did a KWL this way and the kids did such a fabulous job. It's always awesome when they can actually do things independently. Check out how great they are:

 

 

  At the end of the day yesterday, the kids voted again for which leprechaun would visit, and they chose the nice twin, Liam to visit us again! We carefully set up all of the traps around the room to prepare for their visit. We couldn't WAIT to see if we would catch him or Clovers in action!!

 

 

 

When we came in today, we found that those sneaky leprechauns had escaped our trap and that Clovers was sitting on a flower, hiding his magic from us again. They did leave some magic gold coins in each of the traps! Wowie wow! They carefully cradled them in their hands, so excited to be holding a little bit of leprechaun magic.

 

 

And today we finally finished up all of our end-of-quarter assessments. Can I get a WOO HOO?! I am so relieved. We were getting pretty burnt out (and by 'we', I mainly mean 'me'). We used the rest of the afternoon to prepare for the student showcase. My team did such a terrific job and we are so proud of it! Here's a sneak peek of how awesome it looks:

 

 

 

 Gosh, I just re-read this post and it is all over the place! haha So sorry if this was ridiculously confusing. And to end on a random note, because apparently that's the kind of mood I am in right now, this is the adorableness that is sitting next to me! Funny little fuzz head :)

  

 

 

Hope you are having a stress-free and fabby fab week my sweets!

Hugs and love!