Some say that if you can catch a leprechaun he will leave behind a treasure. However, leprechauns are smart and devious- notoriously hard to catch. On the eve of St. Patrick's Day we built leprechaun traps to try our luck at catching one of the quick, mischievous little people. Our students used their creativity, awesome engineering intuition, and art skills to create some neat traps. Their own descriptions of the traps are below.
M., 2nd grade
There's a rock climbing wall with beads and straw pieces and there's a little ledge and there's a trap door and then there's another ledge with a straw and on top of the straw is a golden wrapper with big gold sequins in it so the leprechaun will climb the wall and they will see the gold and they will be distracted by it so that they will fall into the trap door.
T., 2nd grade
So how mine works is they climb up the ladder, they climb up the shells, go in through the door and the door shuts behind them, that they don't realize. They see the pot of gold and they run! Then they fall doooowwwwn and they find more pieces of gold at the bottom but they can't get out.
E., 2nd grade
So how mine works is it's a box and there's two flaps that are held back by one flap, and when the leprechaun walks in, there's bait, and they walk in there's a pressure plate so they press down on the pressure plate and there are two doors that go shut and there's this thing that when the doors swing open they stop and there's silver stuff hanging from that and a pretty shell and really, really pretty peacock wallpaper inside as more bait and that's mine and I really like it.
S., 2nd grade
So how mine works: there's a sign that says "free gold" by some stairs out of cardboard. When the leprechaun goes up the stairs and sees the sign that says free gold on top of the stairs and they see an arch of gold coins next to a hole, and they jump in and then there is a picture of a landscape inside so that they think they are outdoors and there's gold all over the floor and a basket filled with gold. They fall through the hole into the box and that's it.
