Make a St. Patrick's' Day Leprechaun Trap
Can you and the kids catch a leprechaun?
Maybe not, but you'll have fun trying!

Fifteen years ago my daughter’s kindergarten teacher had no idea her creative leprechaun trap assignment would lead to one of our favorite family tradions. For many St. Patrick’s Days since we built simple, elaborate and even silly structures. Of course we never caught any of the sly wee folk, but we had fun and they always leave a fun treat for teh kids to say
"top o' the mornin'".

 

First, rummage through your recycling to gather the supplies for the structure such as cereal boxes, shoebox, tissue box, cigar box or an oatmeal container. Then add paper towels tubes, yogurt containers, milk or egg cartons.
Other supplies and tools…
Green paper or craft foam, gold glitter, glue, glitter glue, crayons , markers or colored pencils, stickers, scissors, hole punch, yarn chenille stems, wood craft stick (popsicle sticks), paper plates.

Decide on the best bait with which to lure the leprechauns; coins, gold sequins, four leaf clovers, gold colored jewelry, or my daughter’s favorite, Lucky Charms cereal.

In addition you will need a few small treats like gold or green wrapped candies, cookies or money…which I’ll explain below.

Now it’s time for the fun part…
Place all of the supplies on a covered table. Then let the kids explore and create. It sometimes helps if they make a simple sketch design or at least explain the concept aloud before they begin.

This Leprechaun trap design was inspired by the saying – “there’s a pot of gold at the end of every rainbow”– so of course, a gold-loving leprechaun will be attracted to the rainbow and then the gold coins. “The Gold is Here” sign is obvious I know, but sometimes you have to be bold to really attract the little guys. Now here is the tricky part…
Inside the box, under the lid there is a string that leads to the tube which is propping the box open – that string is tied to a coin. When the Leprechaun grabs the coin presumably the lid will gently drop.

On the evening of March 16th, set out the traps befote bedtime.
Shhhhh it's a secret -
release the trap...and leave candy behind. Which shows the trap worked and leprechauns did come, but they are just too tricky to be caught!
 
On St. Patrick’s Day morning, the kids will wake to see that they were unsuccessful, but re-assure your children that leprechauns are tricky and then show them the fun treats that were left behind. There were a few occasions in our house where little foot prints were spotted leading to and from the trap (glitter or green marker) and even a note that said "thanks for the gold!"

After the first few times we made these, the make-believe part was over ,yet we continued to design the traps as a family project and I still left fun green treats behind – after all who am I to mess with tradition?