Leprechaun on the Loose Classroom Ideas & Activities
Does your class have a sneaky leprechaun that visits every year? If you’re looking for some leprechaun classroom ideas, then this post is for you. I’ll show you some leprechaun shenanigans, ideas to catch the leprechaun and all sorts of other fun activities to do with your classroom for St. Patrick’s Day.
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Leprechaun Classroom Ideas
St. Patrick’s Day is a great opportunity to get younger students excited about learning. You can have so much fun with a leprechaun in your classroom on this special day. Here are some St. Patrick’s Day ideas that I’ll show you in this post.
- Mischievous leprechaun visit ideas
- How to Catch a Leprechaun including great ideas for leprechaun traps and bait
- Leprechaun fun ideas like scavenger hunts and escape rooms
- Messages and letters from Leprechauns
- Fun Leprechaun Games and learning activities
How to Catch a Leprechaun
Reading this fun book to your class is a great way to kick off your leprechaun activities! “How to Catch a Leprechaun” by Adam Wallace is about a tricky little leprechaun that boasts about how no human has ever caught him. Every year children try to build elaborate traps to catch him and get his pot of gold but he always escapes!
Signs of a Leprechaun on the Loose
After reading this book many classroom experience signs that the leprechaun has visited their classroom and is on the loose throughout the school! Here are some of the signs.
A Classroom Mess
Many leprechauns will cause a mess in the classroom like spilling the library books with signs that they were there like green tinsel, streamers or confetti where the messes are. It’s the most fun if you discover this mess with the students for example when you are leading them back to class from P.E. or recess.
Leprechaun Journal
Learning Activity-Have students explore the room to see all of the things the mischievous leprechaun did and write about them in a leprechaun journal. They can also write predications of what the little guy will do next.
Read on to see some more way that these little elves cause havoc in the classroom.
Flipped Furniture
One of the ways that tricky leprechauns make messes in the classroom is they turn chairs upside down, flip desks backward, or switch a few classroom items around.
Jumbled Supplies
Sometimes when leprechauns are making a mess, they’ll hide common classroom items (like markers or erasers) in silly places.
Upside-Down Clocks or Posters
Posters, clocks, or even classroom signs are sometimes hung upside which creates a sense of mischief.
Miniature Footprints
Often times little classroom leprechauns leave green footprints as signs that they have visited! They may have stepped in green washable paint or on a green marker.
Green Leprechaun Footprints
Here’s another example of green sticker footprints left by little leprechauns. You can find these footprints here.
Green Water
I’ve seen classroom leprechauns turn water the color green. Maybe the class got water bottles for snack time and the class left the room and when they came back the water was green in the water bottles! How fun would it be if it tasted like Green Berry Hawaiian punch?
Or maybe it’s just water with green food coloring.
Crazy leprechauns might even turn the toilet water green!
Leprechaun Classroom Ideas for Snacks &Treats
If students bring their lunch or snacks silly leprechauns are known to secretly swap a few items with green alternatives or leave some St. Patrick’s Day treats for the whole class. Here are some green snack and leprechaun treat ideas:
- Green grapes
- Lemon-Lime Jello
- Green Apples
- Chocolate Coins
- Milk with Green food coloring
- St. Patrick’s day cupcakes or cookies
- Green candy like M&Ms, jelly beans or Laffy Taffy
- Shamrock Shakes, (mint milkshakes with St. Patrick’s day theme sprinkles)
Pair it with a tiny hat or shoes left behind for added fun.
Trapped Treats
Students love it when the leprechaun leaves a small pile of gold chocolate coins or candy in a locked box with a riddle or puzzle for students to solve before they can open it.
Mischievous Messages from the Leprechaun
Have students spot if the leprechaun has left any messages on whiteboard or smartboard. You can tell it’s from them because it will be in a silly, leprechaun-like tone, such as:
- “Top o’ the morning to ya! You can’t catch me!”
- “The gold is mine—nice try!”
- “Catch me if you can!”
Leprechaun Letter
If the leprechaun wants to leave more detailed messages with instructions for the students, he’ll leave a letter.
Magic Rainbow Path
Have children keep an eye out for a magical rainbow trail that leads to a surprise like colorful paper footprints or rainbow tape leading to a surprise like a hidden box of treats.
Wacky Spelling
Another sign of a leprechaun on the loose is that the class schedule may be re-written with silly leprechaun-style changes, like:
- “Lunch: Gold Coins & Rainbows”
- “Math: Countin’ Pots o’ Gold”
Glitter Trails
Have your students look closety around the room because sometime leprechauns leave glitter trails especially around windows and doors to show where they have escaped.
Leprechaun Trap Ideas
Now, it’s clear your school has a leprechaun on the loose. So, it’s time to try to trap him!
Building leprechaun traps is a great activity to develop skills in young learners including stem skills, critical thinking, fine motor skills all while using their imagination and having fun! Challenge students to try to build the perfect leprechaun trap to catch the sly leprechaun.
You can provide your students with materials like green construction paper, popsicle sticks, boxes, string, pipe cleaners, cardboard, tape, glue and glitter.
Leprechaun Trap Plan
Have students write and draw out their trap plan explaining how the trap works.
Students may want to use bait like gold coins or lucky charms to help catch the leprechaun. Keep reading and I’ll who you some more fun ideas for leprechaun bait.
Classroom Leprechaun Trap
Another idea is to create a giant trap as a classroom. You can even get a printable trap kit to make it a little easier on you. Here’s how it works. You can get this printable from Etsy here. Then you use a cereal box for the main trap, an empty paper towel roll for the slide, and popsicle sticks for the ladder.
Leprechaun Classroom Ideas for Bait
Check out some classroom activities for creating leprechaun bait to help catch that mischievous little guy. For each of these ideas you can have students put the bait by their traps to lure the leprechaun!
Pot of Gold Slime
If you’re not afraid of getting messy your student would have fun making pots of gold slime. This slime can be left in the traps to help catch the sneaky little leprechaun. This would be a great activity to have parent volunteers help with.
Here’s how you make the slime:
Ingredients:
- 6 cups of white Elmer’s glue
- 6 cups of warm water
- 3 teaspoons baking soda
- 1–2 cups gold glitter (adjust based on preference)
- 6–9 cups liquid starch
- Optional: Gold food coloring for a richer gold tone.
Materials:
- Large mixing bowls
- Measuring cups and spoons
- Mixing spoons or spatulas
- These little cauldron kettles to separate slime for each student into pots.
Steps to Make Gold Slime
- Prepare the Glue Mixture: In a large bowl, mix the glue with an equal amount of warm water (6 cups each).
- Stir until well combined and smooth.
- Add Baking Soda: Sprinkle in the baking soda and mix thoroughly. This helps the slime firm up during activation.
- Add Glitter and Coloring: Stir in the gold glitter and optional gold food coloring until evenly distributed.
- Activate the Slime: Gradually add the liquid starch, 1 cup at a time, stirring continuously.
- Keep adding and mixing until the slime starts to pull away from the sides of the bowl and form a cohesive ball.
- Adjust the starch amount for a stretchier or firmer texture.
- Knead the Slime: Once the slime is formed, knead it with your hands until smooth and non-sticky.
- Store: Store in airtight containers or resealable bags to keep it fresh until use.
- Portion: Divide the slime into smaller portions for each student and put in the mini pots.
Tips:
- Test a small batch first to get the texture right.
- Add glitter gradually to avoid overwhelming the mixture.
- If the slime is too sticky, add a small amount of starch; if too firm, add a little warm water.
STEM Lucky Rainbows Activity
A fun activity for your class is to make magical rainbows to help catch the leprechaun. This is a great trick because all leprechauns know that the end of a rainbow is where the pot of gold is found. To create these magical rainbows all you need is a pipe cleaner, Froot loops and marshmallows!
Lucky Charms Bait
Lucky Charms cereal in Ziploc bags work great for leprechaun bait! You can get these printable bag tags on Etsy here. Then you just print and attach to each bag.
Leprechaun Classroom Activities
There are so many fun St. Patrick’s Day activities. Some of these your leprechaun may introduce or encourage the class to do with either a class note or a message on the white board.
St. Patrick’s Day Scavenger Hunt
The class leprechaun can lead your students on a St. Paddy’s Day scavenger hunt to find hidden treasure. The treasure hunt starts with a note from the leprechaun letting the class know that there’s hidden treasure and the first clue to find it.
This will lead them to the next clue and so on until they are led to the treasure. The treasure can be small gifts, candy, treats or gold coins. To make it easy you can get this printable classroom scavenger hunt kit here.
St. Patrick’s Day Escape Room
Would your students have a blast if the leprechaun left a fun escape room game for them? This printable escape room kit is perfect for 5 to 9 year old children. To help teachers out it includes hints for students.
For this activity put students into small groups of six. Print off a kit for each group. Student will work together and travel through secret passageways, make their own leprechaun hat, solve puzzles and discover a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow!
Leprechaun Writing Activity
St. Patrick’s Day has so many fun writing ideas that your students will get excited about. Here are some fun writing prompts to use in your classroom for the Month of March:
- What would you do if you found a pot of gold?
- Write a story about a leprechaun visiting your school.
- If I trapped a leprechaun…
- How would you convince a leprechaun to share his gold?
- I’m lucky because…
Feed the Leprechaun and Pot of Gold
Here’s a fun learning activity for kindergarteners. Have them feed the leprechaun or the pot of gold all of the upper-case or lower-case letters. You could also do this with numbers or sight words.
Leprechaun Math Activities
Holidays like Saint Patrick’s Day are the perfect time to work on math skills with fun activities that will make student forget they’re learning. Let’s check out some of the best St. Patrick’s day themed math activities below.
Roll and Cover Math Game
Leprechaun roll and cover is the perfect center activity. For a fun St. Patrick’s Day twist have students cover with gold coins or foam shamrocks!
Gold Coin Counting
Use plastic or paper coins or even chocolate coins for addition, subtraction or multiplication games. They can graph the coins as well.
Lucky Clover Patterns: Practice patterns with clover shapes or use them in graphing exercises
Magical Math
First have students sort and count Lucky Charms marshmallows. After sorting the marshmallow shapes students can graph how many of each they have. Next have your students add them up for example add the moons plus the hearts.
Leprechaun Goodbye Letter
After all of the excitement and before the leprechaun escapes for the year he usually leaves the class, a letter telling them it was a good try, and they almost had him. Sometimes he even leaves some chocolate gold coins or a small treat!
I hope you found some fun new leprechaun classroom ideas that you can use in your class this St. Patrick’s day! Feel free to save your favorite ideas to your Pinterest boards. To do that just click on the picture and then the P and choose your board.
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