Let Your Students Know How Lucky You are to Have Them
I love to let my students know how special I think they are with these seasonal door hangers. For St. Patrick’s Day, I put up a new shamrock each day with a reason why I am lucky to have them in my classroom. I call them Shamrock Shout Outs. Reasons could include: they have excellent manners, they always try their best, or our problem solving skills are on point!
Plan a St. Patrick’s Science Day
Plan a “St. Patrick’s Science Day” where your students rotate through different investigation stations. You could even include grade level teammates to have each classroom be a different station – a great way to collaborate and have some fun while providing your students with a fun learning experience. Stations could include:
1. Dancing Gold
Place golden raisins in a glass of 7-up or Sprite. At first the raisins will sink to the bottom of the glass because they are denser than the soda, but as the carbon dioxide is released in the soda, the raisins will appear to dance or bounce up and down. Have students make predictions about what will happen and why.
What student doesn’t love slime? And what teacher doesn’t love making a science lesson about polymers more engaging? Check out this great St. Patrick’s Day Slime lesson.
Growing crystals with a Borax solution is always fun, but extra festive with this fun St. Patrick’s Day Twist. As with all chemistry projects, remind students of safety rules when handling chemicals. Borax is a chemical and should not be ingested or inhaled.
Get Your Data Collection On
Lucky Charms cereal makes a great data collection activity for St. Patrick’s Day. Have your students make predictions about how many of each marshmallow charm will be in the box. Then give each student a bag of the cereal to record how many they have. As a class, total up the number of marshmallows from each bag. Older students can expand on this activity by using fractions, decimals, and percentages.
Kelly Malloy is a 4th grade teacher in Northern Nevada. She has previously taught 3rd grade and 7th grade math as well. She is passionate about engaging students in with activities that are both educationally rigorous, but also fun at the same time.