Leprechaun Attack

Ruby’s birthday started off with a bang yesterday as we arrived at school to find that the place had been ransacked by leprechauns.  Despite the leprechaun traps placed all over the school, the entire building was covered with little green footprints.  The water had all turned green.  Chairs were tipped over, books were upside down, snacks were eaten, and the whiteboards were full of taunting messages from the wee folk.

Yesterday was also my day to hang out at school for a little while and teach the kids a song.  I volunteered for that day specifically because it was Ruby’s birthday and I wanted to spend a little extra time with her, but as it was the beginning of their St. Patrick’s Day celebrations, I wanted to choose an Irish song.  Googling “Irish children’s songs” did not help me much.  Most of the songs were either about drinking, or contained some sort of horrible death, which did sound Irish to me, but not pre-school approved.

I finally settled on “Michael Finnigan,” which has about 4,000 verses, depending on which web site you go to, and some of them do involve drinking and/or dying, but since there were so many verses to choose from, I picked the ones that I thought would go over well with the 4 and 5 year old set.  After wandering the school and surveying the damage done by the wild leprechaun party bus (I’m not entirely sure what kind of party it was, but there were tiny green clothes strewn about, so I think I have some idea), we settled down for song time with Tenor Dad.

I think the song was a success, and I got to read the story too.  The book was, not coincidentally, about a leprechaun, so I did my best leprechaun voice and got rave reviews for my silliness.  There was also a dog in the story, and I do have a pretty good dog voice, if I do say so myself.  When I was finished with that it was clean up the classroom time, since the little people had left the place practically unusable.  Edward and I snuck out at this time, although I kind of wish we had stayed for snack.  Ruby and I had made cupcakes the day before with 5-leaf clovers on them (a 5-year birthday/St. patty’s Day combo) and I really wanted to eat one (even though I had secretly eaten one the night before…).

After school, Simone and I took Ruby out to lunch and then to see “The Lorax,” which I thought was better than I had expected it to be, and finally home for presents and dinner and all sorts of birthday fun.  Judging from the giddiness of our five-year-old, I’d say the day was a huge success.  Now we just have to clean the house for the actual birthday party tomorrow, which is going to be crazy since apparently everybody on Earth will be attending.  I don’t know how we’re going to fit seven billion people in here, so I hope it’s a nice day for playing outside.

The important thing though, is that the leprechauns will be coming back through again on their way home.  This time, instead of traps, the kids built little beds for them and left a note asking them not to destroy the classroom again.  I guess after a few nights of wild partying, the little guys will probably need to sleep some of it off, so it’s all for the best I think.  And we even left them one of our cupcakes.