Glue, Giggles and Grace: St. Patrick Fun

Friday, March 18, 2011

St. Patrick Fun

The Luck of the Irish!

Well, the month of March came quickly! It brought its usual rainy, windy weather, Mardi Gras, Ash Wednesday and the beginning of Lent, and a great chance to study a bit about Ireland and the wonderful St. Patrick! To do this, we create a fun lapbook filled with all things Irish. The munchkins worked long and hard on their lapbooks and the concepts that were inside. It took two weeks to complete them and they were beautiful when they were finished!

Here's some of what was included...

We began with a mini-study of Ireland. We read several stories and about the Emerald Isle, including some fun legends. These, of course, included many a story about the Leprechaun! So, all in fun, we had to create our own little Leprechaun tale, complete with a little cut paper Leprechaun to illustrate it.

Please forgive me if I say that I have the best 6-year-old writers this side of the Mississippi. Our stories were just priceless...I wish I could post them all!

We added to our knowledge of Ireland by learning about where it was on the map. The munchkins are very familiar with the globe, learning especially the locations of the seven main continents, so they knew exactly where to look when they were told that Ireland is in Europe. They didn't, however, realize how small it would be! I remember hearing...

"That's the whole country? Illinois is bigger than that!"

We added a little map of Europe to our lapbooks and the munchkins colored the Emerald Isle green. Then we created a mini version of the Irish flag. It went inside its own little flap in our lapbook as well.

Of course, making a BIG version was more fun!

We used the big flags to compare and contrast the American flag with the Irish flag. We used a Venn Diagram to do this. The munchkins came up with some great information to illustrate how our flags were the same and how they were different!

We added several little math games to our lapbook. One was a counting clovers (addition) game and the other was a symmetry sorting game. It was fun to find the line of symmetry on different shapes, including the clover.

Then we included a mini folded booklet that explored the growing of clover (although, we used grass seed, because it germinates so quickly!).

The munchkins each received a little hermetically sealed jar. They filled it with potting soil and sprinkled it with seeds. Then, of course, it needed some water before it was sealed back up and placed in the window.

I love this activity for so many reasons. Not only is it a beautiful way to explore the life cycle of a plant and the means by which our world grows, but when we use the little sealed jars, it also gives us an opportunity to watch the water cycle in action. The munchkins are enthralled when they see the sun warming the little environment to the point that the sides of the jar fog up (that's a cloud to them!) And there is so much excitement when the water droplets form on the lid! It actually begins to "rain" inside the jars! It really is cool!

Well, we took what we did with our seeds and made a little folded booklet to illustrate the four things a seed needs to grow: sun, rain, soil and air.

In our class, the munchkins know that when Wednesday rolls around there is usually some sort of fun with food! So for our first week, what better food related fun is there than Lucky Charms!? Of course, the munchkins had to earn the privilege of eating them first...

by sorting the marshmallow shapes...

counting the shapes...

and graphing the results.

But what is this?

Now the only question left was...got milk?

Who is that behind that bowl?

Well, all that brought us right up to the week of St. Patrick's Day, so we decided it was time to learn a bit about this wonderful saint. The munchkins were interested to know that he was not born in Ireland (rather England) but that his teaching took place in Ireland. We learned most of our facts about Patrick from the fantastic children's book by Tomie de Paola entitled St. Patrick: Patron Saint of Ireland. We used these facts to write a little booklet about him for our lapbook. We placed our sentences on the shape of a clover, since that is what Patrick used to help the Irish people understand the Holy Trinity.

Then we got to the fun stuff...

We all made miter hats, complete with golden crosses.