Leprechauns in the Classroom

Can you remember doing something on one of your first holidays? One of the first and most special holidays I remember was St. Patrick's Day. I attended a preschool and was in a small class of about 10 students. Our teachers were the kind of the teachers you would run from the car to greet and always welcomed us with morning hugs. Looking back, they were some of the most creative and thoughtful teachers I have had. They set out on this particular St. Patrick's with the plan of making this day something all the students would remember.

We arrived to find the traditional green decorations, read books about St. Patrick's Day and even did some crafts related to the holiday. We got around to making individual vanilla pudding cups when the class phone rang and the teachers became awfully serious. They relayed the message to us in a whisper…there were leprechauns just spotted at school on the playground! As you can imagine, to a four year old, this is about the most thrilling news you can receive. We hastily abandoned our pudding cups on the tables as the assistant teacher promised to refrigerate them while we went out on our leprechaun hunt.

We combed that playground high and low for the slightest sign of a leprechaun. We discovered traces of green glitter in places, but no leprechauns. After a while we started to give up and think we had missed the leprechauns. With disappointment, we headed back to the classroom. We walked in the room to find it a mess. There was green glitter all over the floor! The assistant teacher informed us that the leprechauns had come in our classroom while we were out and had gotten into our pudding! We got our vanilla pudding cups back, which were now green with green specks in them! We could not believe that we had missed the leprechauns or that they had gotten into our pudding! We enjoyed our green pudding and talked excitedly about the leprechauns with renewed hopes of catching them next year.