Trapping Leprechauns!

Well it's that time of year again! Time to go Leprechaun Hunting! We started the week off by brainstorming things we knew about leprechauns (what they look like, what they wear, etc...). Then the conversation turned to how AWESOME it would be to actually catch a leprechaun...I'm not sure what we'd do with one once we got it, but that's beside the point;)

Students designed a plan to build a Leprechaun Trap using items from our room. Some were quite interesting...for example: "Let's get a plastic Easter egg. Put a piece of gold in it, and then when he comes, we snap it shut!" I then asked who would be stationed here all night because I sure wasn't staying all night! Then we came up with the design shown above, which of course we tested out. We put the pot of gold (yes, real gold not the plastic coins. If you were to use plastic coins, though, I'm sure putting rocks at the bottom of the pot to make it heavier and more believable would work just fine-not speaking from experience or anything;) It might also help to  tell the kiddos that if you touch the gold it takes away the real gold's smell, thus making the scent not as strong for a Leprechaun to detect.

 We put the gold out on our counter to let him know that he had it here for him, and Lennox the Lucky Leprechaun actually visited our room and wrote us a note! He said he could smell the gold but couldn't find it yet. Then we found our Leprechaun book out. He must have been catching up on his reading!

 He also pulled out my green blanket that covers my chair. We thought it looked like he had tried to climb the blanket to get closer to the counter where the gold was...

The day that we set our Leprechaun Trap, students wrote Lennox all kinds of notes! I had to go to a meeting that afternoon, but this is what I came back to:) They wanted to make sure he saw ALL of them, especially because Lennox wrote back to students who had written to him the day before. There was even a cheez-it sitting in with the trap in case he got hungry! Sidenote: this leprechaun has TERRIBLE handwriting! My students giggled when he said that he was just learning to write in cursive:)

We decided that we should all enter the room at the same time in the morning to see if our trap had worked. I promised that I would lock my door as soon as I got here, but that I would not peek in. It drove me crazy not to get to school early, but I kept my word. I did not come to school early. When we tip-toed into the room, this is what we saw:

Prepare yourselves! (especially those that are OCD!)

......

Sometime during the night, Lennox golfed, hopped through my cabinets, tossed desks and chairs around, sprinkled Leprechaun glitter around, and who knows what else!?

It was a CATASTROPHE! My kids were shocked, but we had to find out: Did we catch Lennox?!!

I took a video of the whole thing, but sadly, no, we did not catch our Leprechaun friend. However, Lennox did leave green mints, gum, glow sticks, and chocolate gold coins for all of my students. I guess I'll forgive him for giving me a mild heart attack:) My students KNEW this was the real deal because "Mrs. Watkins would NEVER EVER do that to our room!" (their words).

The chaos lasts for a little while but eventually everything gets picked back up (and re-organized right before Spring Break!) and gets back to normal. This is one of my favorite days of the entire school year:)