Wednesday, March 17, 2010

Happy St. Patrick's Day

Last week Gabriel came home with his March at Home School Project. This month's project was to make a Leprechaun Trap. His instructions were to brainstorm ideas, choose a do-able project, illustrate the trap and it's parts, write complete sentences on how to use the trap with simple sequential steps and then to make the trap.

Gabe really had a blast coming up with ideas on how to catch a Leprechaun. Most of his ideas were not "do-able". His ideas were things like, have a turtle with laser eyes in the doorway and when the Leprechaun comes into the room a cage will drop down on him. So I guided him to the computer to see what we could find out about Leprechauns and how to catch them. We found out that Leprechauns love anything shiny such as gold, like shamrocks, ans since they are cobblers (shoemakers) they also are attracted to shoes. So we took all this into consideration while making the trap. Gabe liked the idea of making a stick trap. A trap with a stick that when pulled would drop something over the Leprechaun. So with that we started trying to figure out what we would need to make the trap. Looking through the recycling we found an cake container. It would be perfect for the stick trap. But then we had to decide what to do with the center section of the container. After a little brainstorming we decided to cut out the center and make a hole for the Leprechaun to fall into. So now as Gabe said we have a double trap. We hung a string from the top which when pulled by the Leprechaun trying to get out of the hole would pull the stick from the lid trapping the Leprechaun. We then set about decorating the trap. And here is what we ended up with.



Gabe was so excited to take his trap to school this morning. He was even asking if he could practice walking with it so that he wouldn't drop it on the way into school. I can't wait to hear about how everything went and what happened at school. I wonder if he will catch a Leprechaun today.

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