Preparing for St. Patrick’s Day

Leprechaun Traps!

My students have been asking about St. Patrick’s day since we returned from Christmas Break, so I knew that I would have to make it good this year.  Last year they were super into it. They made detailed plans for Leprechaun traps, and then spent days constructing them out of classroom materials. We painted a giant rainbow to lure the leprechaun into the classroom, and left tiny leprechaun donuts (frosted fruit loops) to lure a Leprechaun into their trap.  They never did get to see him, he got away, but they absolutely remember the attempt.

This year I decided to do something similar.  I’m making this whole week “get ready for St. Patrick’s Day week”.  The Leprechaun first visited us on Monday, leaving a basket of green “stuff” so that we could add some green to our room.  In the basket were items for our dramatic play area – necklaces, green hats, sunglasses, and gold coins (thank you Dollar Tree!), green paint so that we could paint some beautiful green pictures for the classroom, new green toys for our quiet space, and green rice for our sensory bin.

Today the Leprechaun (his name is O’Reilly) brought us green pipe cleaners and popsicle sticks.  He left a note asking the children to see if they could make a trap to catch him using only popsicle sticks and pipe cleaners.  To be honest, I wasn’t sure how well this particular activity would go over, there isn’t a lot that you can do with pipe cleaners and popsicle sticks, but I really wanted them to get creative.  It worked much better than I thought it would. The children spent most of the morning making traps and finding sneaky places to put them.

Here are some photos:

Of course, these traps won’t catch anything, but I’m hoping that they will be a learning experience, because tomorrow we will be drawing plans for Leprechaun traps that might work better. I LOVE to see their drawings, they are at the point where not only do they look like something, but they actually have thought and meaning behind them.  Then on Thursday we will start building the traps, and finally, Friday we will finish them and try to think of a special treat that might attract a Leprechaun into their trap.

Each day we also also making predictions about what will happen – will he come back to visit us again? Will we be able to catch him? I love that they are having fun while they are problem solving, and they love that they might catch a little green man to keep as a pet!