All the Ants Wear Green Pants on St. Patrick's Day.

(Illustration from Stephen Sheen's delightful story: Miggie Gets Some Pants)

One of the more ridiculous and amusing activities I roll out every March is my kindergarten rhyming emergent reader about animals getting dressed for St. Patrick's Day.  I like to sing the rhymes to the tune of (Mary Had a Little Lamb)
I have a "big" flannel board version of the rhyme that I made.  The kids love dressing the animals as we sing.

All the ants wear green pants, wear green pants, wear green pantsAll the ants wear green pants for St. Patrick's Day

The ants wear green pants...
The pigs wear green wigs...
The cats wear green hats...

and... you get the idea.

The kids have trouble with the crows (bows) and the ewes (shoes), but they love learning new words.
Print the poem in a fold-able quarter-page sized book here:
odd pages  even pages


Other activities related to the holiday include
3rd/4th grade: writing "Green Poetry" in Word, then formatting and adding clip art.
2nd grade:  drawing leprechauns according to a glyph

March is the Month for Thinking Green

I decided that I really need to give my students more experience working with Microsoft Word.  I am more of a Google Doc girl, but I know their teachers will expect them to be able to create a simple document.
With this in mind, Ihad mys students in 3rd grade to think of things that made them think "green".  Then I read the poem "Grreen" from Hailstones & Halibut Bones.(Mary O'Neill, 1951)

They love these color poems.  I quickly showed them how to open a blank document so they could write their own "green poems".  I showed them how to use spell check, format the text, changing fonts, sizes, colors, use the centering tool, and finally how to insert, re size, and position clip art.  Finally, the kids were able to select a printer and generate a hard copy of their work.  ALL of this in 10 minutes or less, so I was pleasantly surprised to find that the students did quite well.  Part of the reason for success, is that the kids weren't allowed to do ANY formatting or clip art until their poem was done.  (quite a motivator)!

Green is ...

Like a long field at sunset

Like a pickle fresh from the jar

Like green beans and broccoli

And maybe a new car

Like grass around a tree

and some leaves

But just remember green green green

(Ashlyn)

The kids loved this "quick & dirty" project, and it gave them a much needed review of basic Word commands as well as a little keyboarding practice.  The kids also "remembered" how much they enjoy poetry books!