When it comes to St. Patrick’s Day, one of our favorite things to do with kids is to make a leprechaun trap! If you haven’t had the joy of creating your own trap before, it’s a magical kids craft for St. Patrick’s Day and it’s a great activity for preschoolers and elementary age kids.
We’ve also made you a free printable to get your trap together smoothly so you can trick those pesky leprechauns into giving you their candy or gold. It includes a two-part rainbow, a ‘free gold’ sign and some four-leaf clovers!
What is a Leprechaun Trap?
A Leprechaun Trap is a fun holiday tradition where kids can make their own trap and set it out the night before St. Patrick’s Day to catch the leprechaun. If you successfully trick the leprechaun into falling into your trap, he’ll have to leave you his “gold” (usually gold chocolate coins or candy) as a reward for catching him so cleverly.
Kid’s love creating the trap as a fun craft and the adults can slip in the treat while the kids are sleeping.
Supplies for Leprechaun trap:
- Square tissue box
- Free Leprechaun Trap Printable
- Coloring supplies (crayons or markers)
- Scissors
- Glue (glue stick or school glue) or scotch tape
- Popsicle sticks or wooden skewers for sign
- Paper straws or pipe cleaner for ladder
- Green wrapping paper or construction paper (optional) or green paint
How to make a Leprechaun trap:
- Wrap your tissue box in green wrapping paper like you would wrap a present (if using cardstock you can tape sheets together to make a big enough paper to wrap the box).
TIP: You can also paint the box green with acrylic paint rather than wrap it!
- Print out your free Leprechaun Trap printable (if you have white cardstock, that will be a little sturdier than regular printing paper).
- Color your template and cut out your rainbow, sign, and shamrocks.
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- Use tape or glue to attach your rainbow “wings” to the side of your box.
- Tape or glue your “FREE GOLD” sign onto popsicle sticks or wooden skewers and tape the sign into the back of your box.
- Cut an “X” shape over the opening with scissors so the leprechaun can fall in and leave his gold.
- You can make a ladder with the paper straws by gluing smaller sections between two taller straws so the leprechaun can climb up! A low temp hot glue gun would be best to attach them, but you could also use tape or school glue if you let it fully dry. Pipe cleaners work well for this too and don’t need any glue as you can just wrap the shorter sections onto the larger ones.
- Decorate with shamrocks, glitter, arrows, or stickers as you wish!
Tips for making a Leprechaun trap:
- To add to the fun, you can set out an enticing treat for the leprechaun to lure him to the trap…think shamrock shaped cookies or a bowl of Lucky Charms!
- Like Elf on the Shelf, you can make tiny powdered sugar footprints or leave some other clue that the leprechaun was there.
- While chocolate coins are a popular item for the leprechaun to leave, you could also put in individual boxes of Lucky Charms cereal or rainbow rice krispie treats!
Leprechaun Trap Printable
This downloadable PDF includes the pieces to print and color your very own Leprechaun Trap!
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Get the How-To
Supplies
Instructions
- Color your template and cut out your rainbow, sign, and shamrocks.
- Use tape or glue to attach your rainbow "wings" to the side of your box.
- Tape or glue your "FREE GOLD" sign onto popsicle sticks or wooden skewers and tape the sign into the back of your box.
- Cut an "X" shape over the opening with scissors so the leprechaun can fall in and leave his gold.
- You can make a ladder with the paper straws by gluing smaller sections between two taller straws so the leprechaun can climb up! A low temp hot glue gun would be best to attach them, but you could also use tape or school glue if you let it fully dry. Pipe cleaners work well for this too and don't need any glue as you can just wrap the shorter sections onto the larger ones.
- Decorate with shamrocks, glitter, arrows, or stickers as you wish!