St. Patrick’s Day is tomorrow, and we’re feeling festive! Break out your green and get into the holiday spirit when you challenge your child to build a Leprechaun Trap!
The goal of this project is for your child to design and build a trap that will catch a mischievous leprechaun. For a little inspiration, before starting the project, read the book, How to Catch a Leprechaun, by Adam Wallace. Click here for a read-aloud that you can watch together.
After reading, it’s time to gather your construction supplies. Here’s what you’ll need:
- Look around your house to find materials to build your leprechaun trap. Think about items such as cardboard boxes, string, paper towel rolls, straws, or coffee filters. Encourage your child to get creative and think outside the box.
- Have a pair of scissors handy.
- Find some leprechaun bait. This could be gold coins, marshmallows, or anything else your child thinks a leprechaun would enjoy.
Once you have your supplies ready, get your child thinking about the design of their trap. Ask questions, like: How big is your leprechaun, and how does that influence the size your trap needs to be? How strong does the trap need to be? Can you name a couple of ideas for how to build your trap?
If you want, you can place limits on the project, such as creating a trap that drops on the leprechaun, or limiting the type of building materials he or she can use. You can also leave the project open-ended and leave the design entirely up to your child.
After the trap is built, it’s time to test it out! How stable was it? Did it work the way your child intended? Is there anything they need to change about the design to make it work better?
This is the perfect project to help spark your child’s creativity and hone his/her engineering skills! Check out the full experiment and more St. Patrick’s Day STEAM activities from STEAMsational HERE.
As always, get as creative as you want, and above all, have lots of fun learning together!
We’ll see you right back here next Saturday for another STEAM Saturday activity! Scroll through the rest of our website to learn how Critchlow Adkins is Building Brighter Futures for the children and families we serve!