St. Patrick’s Day Leprechaun Trap and Printable Letter

St. Patrick’s Day Leprechaun Trap and Printable Letter

Hey Gnomies,

One of my favorite things about parenting is that sometimes I get to act like a kid again. My daughter, Chloe is four and I love this age because she still believes in Santa Claus, magic and fairy tales.

St. Patrick’s Day is coming up and we’ve been doing some reading about leprechauns and Irish folklore. Chloe has been very interested in leprechauns in particular so I suggested we set up a leprechaun trap in hopes of catching one.

I used some supplies from my craft stash and everything else was purchased from the dollar store or the craft store.

I explained to Chloe that leprechauns like gold and a pot of gold can be found at the end of a rainbow. We made our own pot of gold and rainbow to attract a leprechaun and rigged it so when the leprechaun tried to steal the gold he would knock down the branches holding up the hat and it would fall down and trap him.

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The rainbow is actually a scarf I crocheted last year. You can find the tutorial on how to make one for yourself here. 

I used some greenery I bought from Michaels craft store some time ago and faux succulents to lay everything out on. We wanted the leprechaun to think this set up was completely natural as not to raise suspicion.

A few gold coins from the dollar store were laid out on the rainbow to lead the leprechaun up to the pot of gold. We also put out a sign that said “free gold” in case he couldn’t see the giant pot of gold for some reason.

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Chloe was so excited at the prospect of catching a real live leprechaun that you would have thought it was Christmastime. She wanted to look for the leprechaun every five seconds and was convinced that eventually one would be caught in the trap.

We left the trap out overnight and in the morning we discovered the most extraordinary thing, the gold was gone!

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The sticks had fallen and the hat was flat on the table. When Chloe lifted up the hat she saw that all the gold had been taken from the pot and replaced with a piece of paper.

It was a note from the leprechaun:

Although Chloe was sad that there was no leprechaun trapped under the hat, she was thrilled that he had left a note for her. Determined as ever to keep trying to catch a leprechaun, she ordered me back to the dollar store to purchase more gold coins.

I picked up more coins plus some other interesting things to entice our leprechaun back to the trap, but you’ll have to wait a few more days to find out how it all plays out. So check back later this week.

Follow up: I made her a leprechaun hunting kit. Check it out here

Have you ever made a leprechaun trap before? Let me know your ideas in the comments!