Gold Leprechaun Traps for St. Patrick's Day

It was already late Saturday night when we started thinking about the Leprechaun traps we want to set up for the Eve of St. Patrick's Day.  With one kid away at a sleepover, it was a mom and son night.  This was a perfect activity to even out the fun.
As we were looking around for boxes we could use to build our traps, I stumbled upon his two sets of Lincoln Logs.  Peering down into one Lincoln Log canister, I spotted a green roof and returned downstairs with my great find.

As I was explaining how we could use the roof on a box, he looked up and said, "Why don't we just use the Lincoln Logs?"  Oh.  That made sense.  He asked if we could use the green moss planter and then he got busy building. First he built the cabin:

 Then he built the National Bank set- which was perfect with the ladder and gold safe:

We cut the center from a paper plate and painted a rainbow with acrylic craft paints:

The signs are scraps of scrapbook paper with some foam letters from a set of Halloween foam letters.  The sign post is a yellow sparkle swizzle stick.  I looked around for some sort of base for the sign.  I thought about a small lid and we could hot glue the base of the swizzle stick to the lid.

When I opened the pantry door to find a lid off something, the Jif to-go cups nearly jumped out of the pantry.  Perfect.  I peeled back the lid and stuck the swizzle stick in the peanut butter.

The top of the peanut butter was covered with sprinkles and we spread sprinkles up a pathway leading to the cabin.  Leprechauns are drawn to rainbows, right?

So, the perfect attribute to the roof is that the backside has a large cutout.  All we needed to do was lure the Leprechauns to the rock and moss garden so they could hop on the rainbow and land in the pot of gold.

The pot of gold was very unstable on a very narrow base sticking up from the hole in the roof, so the pot would tip- spilling the gold and the Leprechauns to the captor below:

Over to the left, gold was set out in the look out tower and next to the safe.

 No getting around that cowgirl ready to lasso the Leprechauns:

 A trail of gold leads the Leprechauns to a drop off the back side of the look-out tower...

 ...and eye-to-eye with another captor!

Last year was the first year I found out about setting Leprechaun traps.  The kids set all of their own traps and then their traps got trapped.

 We'll have to wait and see if we capture any of those little buggers this year!

Are you setting any traps this year?  Have your kids go through their toys to help come up with some ideas- Lincoln Logs, building blocks, Legos are all great props.  Household items like an empty Kleenex box with thin tissue paper over the hole and a piece of gold in the center covering a small slit so when the Leprechan grabs the gold, he/she falls through is another fairly easy idea.  I'm sure your kids will surprise you with their creativity.

Want more St. Patrick's Day ideas?  Rainbow Filled St. Patrick's Day breakfast.