How To Catch A Leprechaun - Firstieland

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Do you know how to catch a leprechaun? By building a trap of course! Take a look at the fun we had building leprechaun traps and writing about how we planned to catch those little rascals!

Making Leprechaun Traps

Leprechaun traps can be such fun to make for St. Patrick's Day so we decided to give it a try.  In the past, I've sent home instructions for them to make the traps as an “at home” project and return them to school.

They always come back to school super cute, with working trap doors or cups on hinges that really work when you spring the trap.  And they seriously are adorable. And they are basically made by the parents ?.  So, this time I decided we were going to make them in our classroom and I am so glad that we did! The kids LOVED it.

St. Patrick's Day Read Aloud

We started out by reading the story How To Trap A Leprechaun by Sue Fliess.  This cute  book tells the tale of building a trap and trying to catch a leprechaun.  It's the perfect book companion to this lesson. Next, we made a list of things you need to put in a leprechaun trap.  We used the technique of Interactive Writing – where the student and teacher “share the pen”. The students wrote all the things you would need to trap a leprechaun.

Designing Our Leprechaun Traps

To get a little inspiration for designing our traps, we watch some YouTube videos.  You can check them out here on my YouTube channel. Next,  I paired the students together with a partner to design their leprechaun trap. They'd be working together to create their trap and so the first step was drawing a design on paper.

Making Our Leprechaun Traps

Finally they were ready for the fun part – making the actual trap! I sent this  letter home asking parents to send in craft items to help with our traps. You can grab this freebie here.  I gave each pair of students a box as their base and then they went to work creating their trap.  I put out all kinds of “junk” that they used to build their trap….straws, toothpicks, mini mirrors, wood scraps. pom poms, popsicle sticks, etc.

The students worked together building their traps.  They cut trap doors, made signs, and glued items to trap the leprechauns.

The next day, after the glue had dried, it was time to paint our traps.  We used colors that we thought would attract the leprechauns!

How To Catch A Leprechaun Writing

The next day, it was time to write how to catch a leprechaun.  The students used this writing template and practiced their procedural writing using the words first, next, then and last. After they finished their writing, they made this cute leprechaun craft to attach to their writing.  We hung everything in our hallway and put our leprechaun traps on display.  The kids loved everything about this hands on lesson! We had such a great time making the leprechaun traps and writing all about it! Are you ready to try building traps with your kids too? Grab everything you need for this lesson here, or pin for later. Looking for other ideas for St. Patrick's Day in your classroom? Hop over here to see how we learn about the history of this holiday with some non fiction books and writing activities.

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