Grade Level 

Kindergarten

Content Area

English Language Arts, Art

Standards: 

ELA21.K.2 Actively engage in teacher-led reading experiences and collaborative discussions with peers to build knowledge needed to be successful as they learn to read and, later, read to learn.

ELA21.K.22 Use content knowledge built during read-alouds of informational text by participating in content-specific discussions with peers and/or through drawing or writing.

ELA21.K.37 Actively participate in shared and independent writing experiences, for varied purposes and audiences, across different genres.

AE17.K.1 Engage in self-directed exploration and imaginative play with art materials.

Objective: Students will be able to express their ideas in writing and through artwork.

For the month of March, we focused our thematic unit on Rainbows and Leprechauns. 

We first held a class discussion about what we already knew about rainbows and what we would like to learn. From there, we researched rainbows and recorded facts we learned. We then made anchor charts of various things that come in different colors. They used this chart to do a rainbow writing poem. They then constructed a rainbow using play-doh and pipe cleaners to see how many gold coins it could hold. They also got to experiment with color mixing using only primary color watercolors and crayons.

The children constructed a leprechaun trap. They then wrote about how they built and set up their traps. They also wrote about what they would do if they found a pot of gold. The students found that after setting their traps over St. Patrick's Day weekend that no one caught a leprechaun, but he did leave everyone one of his rocks. The students got to experiment with different liquids to see which would make the leprechaun rock reveal what was hidden within: a gold coin!