The class learned about the history of why people celebrate St. Patrick's Day. Many 2nd graders were surprised to find out that the holiday has a religious origin. (Thank you BrainPOP for the great history lesson!) We learned a little bit about Irish culture as well, and discovered that a number of children from our class have Irish heritage.
Since rainbows are commonly associated with St. Patrick's Day in more modern times, I had the kids use Skittles (after all, their marketing tagline is "Taste the Rainbow") to do data analysis during math class. They tallied, created bar graphs, made fractions, and even measured using the rainbow colored candy! For language arts we studied similes, and each child created a poem of similes using the colors of the rainbow. We most definitely had a colorful day, and I'm so happy the kids really enjoyed each of our activities!
The Rainbow math & literacy unit that we used is created by one of my favorite teachers, Lory Evans, and can be found HERE.
