Hands-on fun for St. Paddy's Day March 17, 2005
	KOKOMO, Ind.—Looking for some ways to celebrate St. Patrick's Day and perhaps share your Irish heritage with your children? Try these ideas for hands-on learning about Irish traditions, created by Cindy Ison, lecturer in music, for her Music Methods course at Indiana University Kokomo. In this required course for elementary education majors, students learn basic note reading and elements of music theory in order to be able to read and play simple musical compositions. “The class's primary focus, however, is to encourage the students to use the arts to enhance study in other areas of the curriculum,” Ison said. For a recent lesson on “Celebration of St. Patrick's Day,” Ison created a variety of classroom activities related to the deeds of St. Patrick and many social/economic/cultural contributions of Ireland. Students rotated through four activities: 1) Rainbow pins, illustrating art and science concepts. A pot of leprechaun gold is said to be found wherever a rainbow “touches” the earth. Activity: Cut 2-inch strips of colored ribbons and, following the order of the colors of the rainbow-red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo (deep blue-purple), and violet-string them onto small gold safety pins. Discuss how rainbows are sunlight spread out into its spectrum of colors and distorted to the eye of the observer by water droplets. The colors of the rainbow arise from two basic facts: • Sunlight is made up of the whole range of colors that the eye can detect. When combined, the range of these colors look white. Sir Isaac Newton first demonstrated this property of sunlight in 1666. • Light of different colors is refracted (bent from a straight path) by different amounts when it passes from one medium (air, for example) into another (water or glass, for example). 2) Pipe cleaner shamrocks, illustrating arts and crafts. St. Patrick used the shamrock's three leaves to illustrate the doctrine of the Holy Trinity. The Irish have considered shamrocks to be good luck symbols since earliest times, and this superstition has persisted in modern times among people of many nationalities. On March 17, St. Patrick's Day is celebrated around the world, with the “wearin' o' the green.” Activity: Twist a chenille pipe cleaner into the shape of a 3-leaf clover with a stem. 3) Crocheting, illustrating Irish economics, social studies, and art. Many Irishmen have made their livings as fishermen, and their wives would knit them heavy wool sweaters to keep them warm at sea. Each woman would knit her own individualized pattern, so that if her husband lost his life in the sea, he could be identified by his sweater. Fishing and sheep farming are important to the economy of Ireland. Activity: Tie a small slip loop in one end of a ball of yarn. Insert a crochet hook through the loop, wrap the yarn around the hook once, and pull it back through the first loop, making a second loop. Repeat to make a chain of 10 stitches. Pass the chain to the next person, and see which team can make the longest chain in 10 minutes. 4) Penny toss, illustrating mathematics/probability and folklore. In Irish tradition, it is good luck to give someone a penny. Activity: Choose a partner. Each person gets a penny. Toss the coin 10 times and have your partner record how many times heads or tails comes up. Then switch and record your partner's tosses. Make a bar graph that indicates how many times the penny came up heads, and how many times tails was hit. Players may keep their pennies. Children will also enjoy hearing Irish folktales read aloud (Ison suggests the books Fin M'Coul, the Giant of Knockmany Hill and St. Patrick and the Peddler.) and dancing a simple Irish jig. For the jig, everyone stands in a circle, hands on hips and feet together. Hop in place to lively four-count music, touching your right heel, then toe, then heel to the floor in front of you. (On the toe-touch, the right leg crosses diagonally in front of the left.) On count 4, your feet come back together. Do the same with the left foot. Repeat until you're out of breath and laughing. Quench the dancers' thirst with green “beer” (lime punch), served with shamrock cookies and green mints. Cindy Ison, left, and students dance an Irish jig in Music Methods class. Students craft pipe cleaner shamrocks. Crocheting evokes the Irish tradition of fisherman knits. Return to Current News Releases       Return to Archived News Releases		Media Contact: Anne-Marie Damler OCM (765) 455-9468 adamler@iuk.edu Mary Ellen Stephenson OCM (765) 455-9414 mestephe@iuk.edu