The first graders arrived this morning to find that our classroom had been visited by a little man in green last night.  It looked like he’d had some fun and gotten into a bit of mischief.  Here’s the message he left on our whiteboard:

Do you see how our class dog, Stanley, was decorated?

After putting everything in our classroom right, we had some St. Patrick’s Day fun of our own.

 

It’s a tradition of ours in first grade to do “rainbow math” on St. Patrick’s Day.  (This is also a great opportunity for the students to practice making and interpreting graphs!)  Each student was given a small amount of Skittles and then asked to sort and graph them by color.  The students had to consider how to scale the y-axis of their graphs to best represent the amounts they had. Of course, our hard work was rewarded by tasting a small portion of the samples.

Just before lunch, we were treated to a bagpipe performance by Tom Strelich, which Ms. Markstrum organized.  Here’s some information about Mr. Strelich:

Tom Strelich is the Pipe Major of the Santa Barbara Sheriff Pipe & Drum Corps, a volunteer element of the Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Department.  Local pipers and drummers started the band in 2007, and it is the only Law Enforcement pipe band between Los Angeles and San Francisco.  It is open to anybody interested learning to play, learn, and participate.  Instruction is provided free of charge by members of the band.  Learn the Great Highland Bagpipe  – musical talent is nice, but stubbornness is more valuable. Learn the Scottish Snare, Tenor, Bass Drum, or even an African Djembe – if you can drum on a desk, you qualify.

Visit www.sbbagpipers.com for more information.

We felt very lucky to experience such a fun and festive day!

(Consider lowering your volume before starting this video.)