Kristjan's Leprechaun Trap

This year was Kristjan's turn to make a leprechaun trap for a class project. At first, he wanted to replicate exactly what Clifford made last year, but we encouraged him to come up with his own idea. He wrote up a proposal, as part of the homework assignment, and planned out that he would build his out of legos. Last year when Clifford did his, Pete was the main adult who helped. This time around, I'm the one who got in and helped Kristjan. We spent one Sunday morning sifting through the huge lego container for black and green legos. When we had enough collected, the construction of the lego house began. Once the house was complete, I had Kristjan work on the remainder of the trap. He glued down green felt for grass, cut out a few shamrocks, painted/glittered popsicle sticks for the pathway, put gold chocolate coins inside the house, and glued down some Lucky Charms as bait. Pete completed the final touch by adding fishing line to the house as the official trap. The final part of this assignment was Kristjan had to present his trap to the class. Him and I practiced at home on what he would say and to demonstrate how the trap was suppose to work. On the day of his presentation, I was able to come into his classroom and watch. He did really good and his classmates "oooed" and "ahhhed" at his trap.

So how does Kristjan's leprechaun trap work? Basically, the leprechaun would come upon the house and find a rainbow-glittered pathway with Lucky Charms leading to the house. Once at the door, the leprechaun would see the inside of the house full of gold. What the leprechaun doesn't know is that one of the gold pieces is tied with fishing line and the other end is tied to the door. So when the leprechaun picks up that gold piece, it will slam the door shut, causing a bar to drop, locking the leprechaun inside the house.

Kristjan's teacher had all the kids who participated in this project leave their traps out over the weekend, in hopes of maybe one of them actually catching a leprechaun!! Kristjan was so excited to return back to school on Monday to check his trap. When school got out, he informed me that he didn't catch one, but one of the other traps did catch a leprechaun, though the leprechaun was sneaky and able to escape! :)

Kristjan with his Leprechaun Trap



Kristjan presenting his trap to his class