Leprechaun Messes and Portrait Successes!

My OH My!  March is one busy month!!!!  Between pink slips, conferences, IEP's, St. Patrick's Day, rain, and much more, I am barely keeping my head above water.  How about you?  Hanging in?

Back in February I attended a two day GLAD training. I HATE making sub plans and could have attended the same workshop in June, but because of job uncertainty I figured I should take advantage of the workshop now. Fast forward to March and there is an additional 4 MORE days of training. Now don't get me wrong, if you have not been through a GLAD training I highly recommend it, and I am learning so much buuuuuuuut 4 DAYS of sub plans!!! Le sigh.  Last week I realized leaving a sub with leprechaun visitors on Monday may not be the best idea.  I don't know about your classroom but my leprechaun visitors always have a tendency to wreak havoc.  Tipping over chairs, dumping out  table supplies, and just leaving classroom messiness in their wake.  In order to save the subs sanity, I had these wily leprechauns come during recess on Friday while the kinders were out playing.  When we entered the classroom students were in shock.  I quickly handed out their leprechaun view finders so they could go around the room looking for leprechaun clues.

Ah HA!  They must have come from the closet!  Green footprints were found outside the closet door.

One must get in REAL close to find leprechaun fingerprints. 

Once students had investigated every nook and cranny of the classroom, they headed back to their seat to draw these clues.  For those that needed an extra challenge they made a list of the clues.  Above, you will see a student's hand drawn clues such as: the leprechauns put sparkles on our leprechaun finders; the leprechauns left foot prints and left us lucky green coins; and the leprechauns tipped over the recycle bin.  Students were more than happy to draw, write, sound out words, all in the name of leprechaun fun.  As I was saying goodbye, students were barely out the door before I could hear them rattling off, to the parents waiting outside, the amazing leprechaun event.  The true magic of teaching comes in moments such as this where students are bursting at the seams ready to share.  

Below you will see examples from a parent led art activity.  We call our volunteer parent art program, Art Vista.  This lesson happened to be on portraits.  Students observed and discussed many famous examples of portraits such as Renoir's, Girl With A Watering Can and Goya's, portrait of Don Manuel Osorio Manrique de Zuniga.  Then with step by step directions, they sketched a portrait of themselves, or someone sitting at their table, or they could even sketch ME!  They turned out fantastic!  

This portrait of me was perfect!  I especially love my eyebrows.  

Oh and here is my kitty LuLu ready for St. Patrick's Day wearing her flashing bow tie!