Celebrating St. Patrick's Day and trapping Leprechauns

My daughter and I were talking about St. Patrick’s Day which is on Saturday, March 17^th. We started reminiscing about when we use to live in Tucson, AZ and head downtown every year to their annual St. Patrick’s Day parade and then close friends of ours, who are very Irish, would host a big St. Patty’s Day party in the evening.

Needless to say, we always decorated the house and the kids did crafts to help with the decorating. As my daughter and I were talking, she said the best thing we ever made was Leprechaun traps. These fun traps can be made out of many things from cereal boxes to shoe boxes and are great for letting children’s imaginations run wild. They also can make math and science more tangible when the children are figuring out which type of trap will work best.

Here are pictures of the Leprechaun houses we made way back in 2011.

The story behind Leprechaun traps is that children must believe Leprechauns are real to catch them. You design and make your trap and put something gold in it to get the Leprechaun's attention. Leprechauns love all things gold! When the Leprechaun comes to steal the gold, he gets trapped.  Parents get to play the Leprechaun, like the Tooth Fairy, and snatch the gold in the trap and leave a Leprechaun surprise for the children to find in the morning. Leprechauns are tricky fellows and always figure out how to get out of the trap with their reward before the children awaken. 😊

Here are some links to ideas of Leprechaun houses that you can share with your children.

This is a slide show of different Leprechaun houses to start the creative juices flowing.

https://www.popsugar.com/moms/Leprechaun-Trap-Ideas-34294517

Do you have a child that has the Martha Stewart creative bug? If so, here is a link to a trap from Marthastewart.com.

https://www.marthastewart.com/1057454/how-make-leprechaun-trap?slide=3399688

Some other fun St. Patrick’s Day activities I found on line.

This is a STEAM activity where your children make a Celtic knot design. The description and link to the printable curves is here: https://jdaniel4smom.com/2018/02/steam-activity-irish-designs-with-celtic-knots.html

Here is a whole list of St. Patrick’s Day activities from yummy food to free printables. https://www.momsandmunchkins.ca/st-patricks-day-activities/

You can print these cute little Leprechauns to make fun straw rockets. Have your children see how far their Leprechaun will sail! https://jdaniel4smom.com/2018/02/straw-rockets-with-leaping-leprechaun-pictures.html

Monthly Calendars for Kids Idea

My youngest son brought home a calendar from school and I was going through and marking off the dates and writing monthly information in it when I discovered that the turkey on top was great for holding a pen or pencil and that each day he could cross off the date and his pen or pencil would always be handy.

What's even cuter on this November calendar is that the child's hand was traced and they used that for the turkey's tail feathers.

If you would like to do something like this at home, here is a great site to find printable calendars: Super Teacher Worksheets

You can do this for December buy taking three strips of green construction paper in three descending lengths. Let the child decorate each strip with glitter, paints, markers, etc. and then roll the strips and glue the edges of each strip together. Finally, stack and glue each strip on construction paper from the longest to the shortest and you have your Christmas tree where the bottom roll will hold your pencil or pen.

Go really green, and use green Tempra paint to paint three toilet paper rolls and cut them in varies lengths to make your tree.