Have you ever tried to catch a leprechaun? Leprechauns are mischievous and magical little guys, so we have never actually gotten a good look at one. It’s a tradition now to build a St Patrick’s Day leprechaun trap and these leprechaun trap ideas below are the perfect place to start! Find out how to design and build a leprechaun trap for fun St Patrick’s Day STEM activities.

Find great ideas for making leprechaun trips this month! Learn how to make a leprechaun trap with easy ideas, tips, and suggestions.Pin

How to Make a Leprechaun Trap

Looking for ideas to make a leprechaun trap? Check out a fun way to use materials around the house to build a simple leprechaun trap! If you have a group of kids, encourage everyone to bring in a favorite container from the recycling bin at home for this easy project.

Watch the video for our mini garden trap:

Turn this into an open-ended STEM activity for St Patrick’s Day. Check out the engineering design process.

Make available an assortment of materials. Then, have kids devise a leprechaun trap design and plan it out. Next, they can get into building their leprechaun trap, using math skills, testing ideas, problem-solving weak points, and inventing trapping mechanisms (simple machines).

Alternatively, follow our instructions below. Build this green felt hat leprechaun trap with a rainbow, a colorful ladder, and some gold coins as bait to catch a leprechaun.

You could also make a pair of leprechaun binoculars (toilet paper rolls glued together), so you can keep an eye out for him. Don’t blink, you might miss him!

Free build a leprechaun trap printable!

SUPPLIES:

  • Empty oatmeal container
  • Green, black and yellow felt
  • Cupcake liners
  • Colored craft sticks
  • Green embroidery thread
  • Red, orange, yellow, green, and blue pipe cleaners
  • Chocolate gold coins
  • Green glitter
  • Sharpie
  • Scissors
  • Hot glue/hot glue gun
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Containers: Set aside a variety of boxes or containers so you can have an assortment available when it’s time build your leprechaun traps. Good cartons to collect are assorted packaging boxes,  shoe boxes, oatmeal canisters, cereal boxes, and egg cartons!

  • Ladder materials: Collect small items for building ladders, such as twigs, sticks, toothpicks, popsicle sticks, LEGO pieces, straws, or pipe cleaners.
  • Extra Items to make special features such as rainbows (construction paper, felt, paint, markers, or clay.)
  • Decide on your leprechaun bait. Will you go with gold coins, shiny pennies, skittles, Lucky Charms cereal, or something else?
  • Do you plan to include a black pot like the ones pictured at the rainbow’s end? How about confetti?
  • What will be the trapping mechanism? A gate that closes, a hole to fall into, a stick that breaks, a box that falls, or another idea?

Leprechaun Trap Building Instructions

STEP 1. Start by covering the outside of your oatmeal (or any) container in green felt or green paper and secure with hot glue. Alternatively, you can paint your container green, rainbow colors, or gold.

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STEP 2. Take the lid off the top, trace it on a piece of green felt, cut out, place the lid back on and hot glue the felt to the top of the lid.

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STEP 3. Draw a larger circle on the green felt, cut out and glue to the bottom of the oatmeal container.

STEP 4. Cut a long skinny piece of black felt, wrap and hot glue around the bottom of the “hat”.

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STEP 5. Cut out a yellow rectangle, and then cut a rectangle out of its center. Glue to the black felt strip.

STEP 6. To make your rainbow ladder, glue enough craft sticks together lengthwise to be a little taller than the hat.

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STEP 7. Carefully cut and glue colored pieces of craft sticks for the ladder steps and glue against the hat.

STEP 8. Glue your pipe cleaners onto the back of the hat in the shape and pattern of a rainbow: red, orange, yellow, green and blue.

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STEP 9. Set a handful of gold coins on top of the hat.

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STEP 10: Leprechaun Pulley Trap

Now for the pulley trap system, glue 3 or 4 green craft sticks together lengthwise and one horizontally at the top and glue against the hat.

Poke a hole through the bottom of a green cupcake liner and tie a piece of string through the hole.

Wrap the string lightly around the top craft stick, hanging it over the hat. Pull the string to tighten up the trap. When the leprechaun comes you can let go of the string!

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STEP 11. Cut a yellow craft stick and a square piece of felt. Write “free gold” on the felt and glue to the yellow craft stick. Sprinkle with glitter and glue against the hat.

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MORE LEPRECHAUN TRAP IDEAS FOR KIDS

Click on the links below for more leprechaun traps ideas. I included a selection of leprechaun traps that use a variety of materials.

Make a LEGO Leprechaun Trap from LEGO bricks and a base plate.

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Catch a leprechaun with a Leprechaun Resort by Moms and Munchkins constructed from cardboard. It includes its own rainbow skittles road!

Save up the cereal boxes for this simple Leprechaun Trap by Crafts By Amanda.

This cute leprechaun trap by Buggy and Buddy includes a simple rainbow path, string ladder and signs.

Use items from the recycling bin to make this simple Leprechaun Trap from JDaniels4’smom.

Build a Mini Garden Leprechaun Trap to catch a leprechaun. See picture below.

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How to Catch a Leprechaun

One of the best parts of St. Patrick’s Day is designing and building the leprechaun trap! Big, small, tall, short, wide, or narrow! It doesn’t matter regarding this fun St Patrick’s Day STEM activity. Kids love trying to trap a leprechaun!

Set your leprechaun trap out the night before St Patrick’s Day and find out what a leprechaun leaves behind in a trap. Maybe some gold coins or a treasure or two!

A simple leprechaun trap can built from items you find around the house or inexpensive dollar-store items. The fun is in developing design ideas using things you already have. There are tons of great ways to enjoy STEM on a budget! Check out our Leprechaun Trap STEM kit ideas.

Rainbows, a shamrock, small black pot, gold coins or lucky charms and plenty of the color green are fun things to include when making your leprechaun trap. My son suggested we buy 10 bags of skittles to leave in our leprechaun trap, but I mentioned that a leprechaun is only a wee little fellow!

Make sure to join us as we kick off the month of March with tons of St Patrick’s Day STEM activities, and plenty of awesome St Patrick’s Day slime recipes! Holidays are the perfect time to try new and engaging STEM activities!

Printable St. Patrick’s Day STEM Pack

Over 100 pages of easy-to-use STEM activities will make your prep and planning time a cinch! Cheap supplies, easy to set up and clean up, and full of hands-on fun!

  • 25+ St. Patrick’s Day science activities and STEM projects for kids that are easy to set up and fit into your available time, even if it’s limited!
  • Printable leprechaun theme STEM activities that are simple but engaging for home or classroom. Perfect for K-2 and beyond but easily adaptable to many skill levels.
  • Includes simple background science explanations to share with kids while they explore hands-on and playful experiments, projects, and activities such as simple physics and chemistry concepts.
  • Engaging St. Patrick’s Day STEM activities pack with theme activities, journal pages, and design process steps! Learn about the design process and think like an engineer while you design and build a Leprechaun Trap!
  • Easy to gather supplies makes these STEM activities ideal when you have limited resources available. Try the leprechaun launcher or rocket! Solve codes and puzzles, too.
  • Additional STEM activities Include the tallest gold coin tower challenge, brick building challenges, math task cards, and screen-free coding activities.
  • Bonus fun pack includes games and activities to round out your St. Patrick theme activities, such as I Spy, bingo, matching, Would You Rather cards, board games, word puzzles, and more! Perfect for parties, too!
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