The Leprechaun Catcher

If you are a leprechaun, watch out !!! We have a treasure trove waiting here for you. Whatever you do, resist temptation! Malachi and I had a lot of fun looking up things about leprechauns and rainbows on wikipedia. And now he can find Ireland on the globe. I told him it was near Germany and he found it pretty quick after that. Incidentally (Mike) he can also find Burkina Faso.



Making a leprechaun catcher is apparently a yearly class activity here at the kids' school. At the top of Malachi's is a lovely little meadow scene with two bushes and a tree and a wonderful grassy area. This is designed to help the leprechauns feel safe and comfortable about the area, so they would want to jump around, looking for gold. Of course, the "grass" is tissue paper that covers a hole in the box. Also there's a string of beads winding around, to attract leprechauns.



This post is all about Malachi and his project for school. He and I spent about 3 hours making this today. Good thing he has afternoon kindergarten!! The videos pretty much explain everything. And he is a goofy child. He makes me laugh, that's for sure.



One side of the box has a sign that says "CAUTION Jumping might lead to GOLD" It is written in gold colored crayon (the words caution and gold). The other side is a sign that says "No leprechauns allowed." The back of the box has green construction paper four-leaf clovers pasted all over it and on the bottom of the box is a wonderful rainbow that Malachi made. We meant to paste it on the side, but we got turned around and pasted it on the bottom by accident. Since we had already cut the hole in the top, we had to keep the bottom designated as bottom. He didn't want to make another rainbow. It was lots of work.




The front of the box has double doors that open into a cavern full of gold glitter, gold coins, two rings and a gold bracelet. Even better, there is a whole container full of treasure (gold buttons in a baby food jar). We covered the top with clear packaging tape so the leprechauns can't even get inside the jar once they are trapped in the cavern. There are marbles rolling around the inside and piles and piles of green goop (with glitter on them). From the distance they look like they might be emeralds, but when the leprechaun steps on them, ha! he is trapped in the goop. He'll slip on the marbles and fall into the goop and if that doesn't catch him, the sticky double sided packaging tape will.