Lirpaloof Day! Say What?

 

You're probably asking yourself.. what on earth is her title of this post all about? Well, let me tell you!

 

I need to give a HUGE, HUGE, HUGE shout out to Denise over at Sunny Days In Second Grade!

 Be sure to click here, follow her blog and go snag this freebie for next year!

 



She created this fabulous Lirpaloof bird freebie to have a little fun with your kiddos on April Fool's Day!

 

 

Now that you know where to get it, let me tell you how this went down in my classroom with my firsties today! By the way, we also did this activity with Mrs. Russell from Mrs. Russell's Room! (We just so happen to be co-planning/teaching/facebooking-at-all-hours-of-the-night buddies!)

First, we started out reading through the story about the Lirpaloof. We then did the bottom part that says "Do This" which involves coloring the bird to match the description from the story and underlining the meaning of ELUSIVE with a crayon in the text. Then students had to figure out from the passage the three different things that the Lirpaloof eats and draw a picture of those three things. Once we had done all of those steps, I told them that after lunch, we would go outside and try to find the Lirpaloof. I didn't have time to go to the store for carrots ahead of time, so I told the kiddos that if there were carrots at lunch...perhaps they would want to hold on to them!

Pause story - insert funny quote from sweet child on the way to lunch - "Mrs. Roberts, for Easter yesterday, one of my chocolate candies was that kind of bird, it was a Lirpaloof!" Hehehe, too cute! Of course I just went right along with that...

Well, sure enough at lunch, we were blessed with carrots to choose from today! The stars aligned just for us today! So as you can imagine, I had 16 first graders all with little baggies of carrots on their trays anxious for lunch to be over! I even made a trip over to speak with the lady who monitors my class during lunch giving her the "low-down" on our plans so that she would understand why NONE of my children wanted to actually EAT their carrots LOL!

Of course, firsties being firsties, they had a TON of questions for me.. Do you think we'll see it? Do we have enough carrots? What song do we sing to get it? What if it's not in these trees that we're standing by.. it won't be able to hear us? How big is it? What does it sound like?

You get the picture! :)

So after lunch, we gathered our carrots and headed out to the recess field...

 

Here are two of Mrs. Russell's sweet boys singing the very special song they created! "Oh Lirpaloof, Oh Lirpaloooooof, I have a carrot for you.... Oh Lirpaloof, Oh lirpaloooooof....." Totally ADORABLE!

Here we are... readying our carrots HIGH up in the sky and starting to sing!

 

 We looked WAY up in the trees... searching, searching, searching....





THEN.... Mrs. Russell and I called for everyone's attention and on the count of 3 said "April Fool's!" This photo captures their "awmantheytotallygotus" faces! LOVE, LOVE, LOVE!

 

It was SUCH a fun time had by all! So again, Denise, thanks SO much for the wonderful resource that was not only A BLAST but was also educational because we had to use the passage to support our answers and drawings!