Leprechaun Trap Engineering
Leprechaun Trap Engineering Inspiration Ideas for St. Patrick’s Day
The Leprechaun Trap
“The Night Before St. Patrick’s Day” by Natasha Wing and illustrated by Amy Wummer is the perfect book for St. Patrick’s Day. STEMHAX creators chose this well written and rhyming read aloud to create our companion and activity packet. It was easy to incorporate Science, Technology, Engineering, Math, History, Art and Xtra cool stuff to correlate with this cute book. Amy Wummer must have deep a love for St. Patrick’s Day as it shows in her illustrations. I imagine that she is also a fan of engineering, too.
The Night Before St. Patrick’s Day
In the book the kids set traps to try to catch a leprechaun. There are five examples that your children can use for inspiration when they decide to take this engineering challenge. We were inspired by the “Lucky Leprechaun Slide” from the book. Check out the FREE Book Spotlight:
===> CLICK HERE<===for Guided Discussion Questions
After the read aloud here is a simple book report to assess students:
Alternative Online Books
There are a few books that are about trapping a leprechaun. Here are some alternative books to The Night Before St. Patrick’s Day. These are wonderful if you already read our top pick on last years St. Patrick’s Day.
How to Catch a Leprechaun
This cute little St. Patrick’s Day rhyming book is sure to please your young reader, and inspire anyone to engineer a leprechaun trap!
How to Trap a Leprechaun
“How to Trap a Leprechaun” written by Sue Fliess, is read by the Storyteller at Kid Time Story Time. Leprechauns are full of trickery. If you catch him will he grant you a wish? Only one way to find out…
Designing the Trap
There are so many different options to consider when planning the trap. Using an engineering planning process will help children to create the idea in their heads and write it on paper. The four stages for early childhood are to plan, ask, imagine, plan, create and test. Here are the materials we used to create out trap should you want to replicate an idea for your students.
Materials List:
- Oat container
- Construction paper
- Gold coins (Dollar Store)
- Tooth picks
- Wooden skewers
- Green play dough (we made ours from scratch – CLICK HERE for recipe)
- Mini-marshmallows (recommended for younger children)
- Cotton balls
- Glue
- Stickers
- Markers
- Scissors
Designing Assistance
We have added these elements to the St. Patrick’s Day Companion. It is available in out TPT Store at an affordable price. CLICK===>HERE to see the entire St. Patrick’s themed companion.
Help students by using these sheets:
Kids can try to recreate this trap, or use different items to make their own creation. Younger kids will create their traps and even though they might not look like the one we created, it is still great. They will see this as art as well, and truth be told their version might work better. There is no real way to test the trap until March 17th, when kids can look to see if they actually caught the tricky little pot of gold carrying man.
We made a sign to entice him to climb up the ladder and once at the top he will need to slide down the slide to get the faux gold. We don’t think he will be able to get out because there are no stairs.
Remind children when they are engineering their leprechaun traps, they want the leprechaun to go in, but not to escape. The most important thing about designing the leprechaun trap is to have fun! The engineering process can take a few attempts to get it to work. Encouraging children to think for themselves is key, and asking open ended questions helps (Yes or No answers end the thought process). This is how they learn and utilize critical thinking skills.
Instead of making St. Patrick’s only a one day event, the fun can be spread over a week or two. Thank you, see you soon! As an Amazon Affiliate I might make a commission if you make a purchase, at no cost to you.
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