A few weeks ago, Zach came home with a school assignment to build a leprechaun trap that was due on St. Patrick's Day. My first thought was, YOU'VE GOT TO BE KIDDING ME - THESE KIDS ARE ONLY IN SECOND GRADE! But Zach was really excited and had even come up with a design all on his own (maybe there's a little bit of engineer in him just like his mom!). So after thinking about it for a few days, we looked at his ideas and after only a slight modification, we had our design. Using some items around the house, we built our trap early last week and had it all ready to go for St. Patrick's Day.
Here's our trap all built:
Here's how it works. The Leprechaun will come up to the trap and notice the WELCOME! sign on the front, so of course he'll come right up into the box. The next thing he'll do is see the ramp with the sign tell him that there is gold this way and to go where the arrow is pointing.
He'll walk up the ramp and notice the shiny gold coin at the top. Well, since Leprechauns just love shiny, gold things, he'll really want that gold for his pot of gold. He'll think he can just walk right across that white ramp across the cup. Of course what he doesn't know is that is made of paper, so as soon as he starts across and grabs the gold, he'll fall into the cup holding on to the gold coin. But you'll notice that the gold is attached to a string which also has a round piece of cardboard attached as well. As the string is pulled, this piece of cardboard also comes down and covers the cup, trapping the leprechaun inside.
Unfortunately, we didn't catch any leprechauns this year, but Zach had a blast taking it to school and explaining/demonstrating his nifty little leprechaun trap. He was so proud of coming up with the design and pretty much building it all by himself (minus the hot gluing part!).
To be honest, what I thought was going to be really painful turned into a really fun time for the two of us to talk, plan, and build. We were really both excited and proud with the final product.
In fact, he had so much fun, he told me that he's already thinking about the changes he wants to make to it for next year. Oh boy, this should be fun! :)
