April Fools this jokes on the parents!

Today a student cut my hair off!!!!

Then another student poured glue on me!!!!

April Fools!

You either love it or hate it. 

Chances are you love this fun day of the year if you are the one playing the joke and dislike it if the joke is always on you. 

Many teachers fear this day dreading the jokes that will be flying left and right. As a Kindergarten teacher I have learned that children do not understand the concept very well at this age. I get a lot of "Hi Miss P, heheheheh April Fools" or "You are pretty April Fools." 

My students surprised me this year by catching me a few times. I really did fall for the "There is a stink bug on your shoulder" more than once!

Since my kiddos were into the spirit of jokes I took the opportunity to use their interest and make it a writing assignment. And boy did we have fun with this! As a class we decided to trick the parent in to thinking that their children got a red card for the day. Our school has a color card system and the red card is the end all of cards, the principals office!!!!!!! We knew if our parents saw this they would flip and thought it would be funny to include a note stating what they did wrong. 

First, we reviewed how to write a letter and got started on our sloppy copies. We talked about the greeting, body, and closing. Since we are Kindergarten after all we worked together to create an outline for everyone to follow:

               Dear Parents,

I got a red card. 

1- 3 sentances explaining why.

I am not sorry!

                                                 From, Name  

We created the sloppy copies with huge excitement. They were very excited and creative in thinking about what they could have done. I have never seen them so happy to do a writing assignment. They even used original ideas! Here are some of the results:

To make the stories even more believable we staged the actions that they did wrong. 

We topped it all off by adding a giant APRIL FOOLS coloring page to the end. When we put the pictures with the writing together they were pretty convincing!

Needless to say we got all of the parents pretty good!

Shamrocks Galore

It is a little late posting this but better late than never!

A tricky little leprechaun plagued our room for the past few weeks. 

His first mission was to decorate our room. He did a wonderful job of that. Everywhere we looked the room was covered with shamrocks and things that are green. Green is my favorite color so I could not complain.

To top it off he even left small messages on our boards! This really got the kids going. We decided that we just had to catch this tricky little fellow.

The students spent a lot of hard work and time making some pretty awesome traps to catch the leprechaun. They used lots of green, gold, glitter, and rainbows to trick him. We also heard these little guys do not like to follow rules so they placed signs telling them not to enter.

Crystals

On the weekend leading up to St. Patrick's day we had a blast with activities. First, we made magic. We took pipe cleaners and shaped them into gold coins and shamrocks. Next, we dissolved borax into hot water. This was a fun science experiment where we got to talk about heat, how matter can dissolve, and of course about science safety. We tied the shapes to yarn on a string and hung them in our borax mixture to sit over the weekend. I did not tell the students what would happen.

When the student returned to school on Monday they were amazed to see that their pipe cleaners had turned to crystal! We talked about our senses and how we can observe the changes in our pipe cleaners!

Leprechaun Craft

Little leprechauns are funny looking things. We made our own little guys using this simple activity. First, we made a paper lantern by folding the paper in half, cutting slits, and glueing the ends together. This made the body Next, we cut out the face, hat, beard, and glued on googly eyes. Last, we added arms and legs by accordion folding strips of paper!

The Cave

We decided as a class that we should make a trap out of our igloo. Now that the snow was melting and our penguins had left we needed a new use for our igloo. We took brown paper towels and paper and covered the structure (this was a great to recycle a project). Next we placed our Leprechaun craft in the cave to make it look like a safe place for leprechauns. Last we placed a sign that said not to enter. We were sure that we would catch the little rascal. 

The Destruction

What a disaster!!!!!!! I returned the next morning to find the room a disaster zone! Desks were flipped, books were thrown, and shelves were toppled over! Who could have done this!

To make matters worse the little guy left a taunting message on the board.

When the students arrived in the morning they could not believe their eyes. They found that their traps had all been set off and that the leprechaun had left them gold coins. 

Upon further inspection we learned that there were gold coins hidden in the cave and in the mess at our desks. At least he was nice enough to leave us a little gift after tricking us!