How to make a Leprechaun Trap (2 of them!)

Well, we didn't catch any leprechauns in our traps this year...but Jay's art teacher did such a good job designing them and Jay had so much fun setting them, that I had to share them anyway...for next year, right?

This first leprechaun trap has a clothes hanger attached behind the rainbow that is cut and bent to go under the green paper too.  The clothes hanger is bent to hold up the plastic container. 

  

The "pot of gold" has pennies in it to weigh it down to hold the string in place.  When the {little} leprechaun comes to snatch the treasure the trap (plastic container) will fall on him!  

The "gold" on top is a gold foil wrapper in a mound that looks like gold!

His teacher told him that leprechauns do NOT like rules.  So they made a sign to stay off of the grass, just to tempt them closer!  

This is the second trap they made:  It's from a 2 liter soda pop bottle.  They cut off the top and used a cottage cheese lid to go over the top and covered it with felt.  The gold on top is the pop bottle lid upside down with pieces of gold circle fabric in it.

When the leprechaun climbs the ladder (bamboo skewers, I think) he walks across the top to get to get to the gold and he falls inside!  They had cut a hole in top of the lid and holes in the felt but covered it with felt so he wouldn't know!

Kay and Ellie have had fun setting it off...or was it the leprechauns that had escaped?  
It's a good thing we still had our own leprechaun peg dolls in their village to play with so we're not too disappointed.  
And you know those {little} shamrock necklaces and skirts?  They made the front page of our local newspaper for St. Patrick's Day!

Good Luck catching some {little} leprechauns!

St. Patrick's Day Tangrams

Jay has been at work designing tangrams for Kay to do.  I love watching him come up with new ideas.  After he builds them, we trace them and then Kay has a pattern to work with to build them too!
There aren't many ideas on the web for St. Patrick's Day tangrams so I took some photos of what he came up with.  I don't have patterns to share because my scanner won't cooperate...
Shamrock Tangram:

Irish harp tangram: (not our best, but our best effort--this was a tricky one!)
Tangram Leprechaun:
Tangram Pot of Gold:

Enjoy!

Leprechaun Land (in the village)

We've been playing with {little} people this week: the leprechauns have been at our house!

Jay has 2 leprechaun traps set in our house but those sneaky {little} leprechauns keep escaping when the traps go off (The traps he made at his art class are darling and I'll try to get some photos to share.)
Since we haven't had much luck catching them, we made our family into leprechaun peg dolls instead!

We have had so much fun with other {little} building projects in our village and playing with our pilgrim peg people in our Thanksgiving Village.   
So, naturally, we had to make a Leprechaun Land to add into our village.  For those of you who haven't seen our other village projects, it's kind of like a doll house, made into many houses.  There's so much more fun to have that way!
Want a tour of {this little} magical land?
You got it.
There's quite a bit of dreaming up that you can do with some felt and the invention box.
Here's how the leprechauns get from our land to theirs...This magical lane was made from the side of a cereal box, and chenille stems, and then covered with some rainbow fabric.
This is a leprechaun apartment (cardboard covered with fabric).  Here's a close-up:  leprechaun Ellie has a toadstool table, leprechaun Kay is taking a {little} nap.

Our toadstools (on the left) were drawer pulls painted by Jay and Kay.  The top of this house in the middle is from a top of a spray cool whip can.  Under that is a yogurt cup with part of a lei glued around the bottom of it.  The leprechauns like to hid in there with their gold!
We like to use scrabble tiles to practice spelling words while we play in our {little} land.
Are you wondering where all of the leprechaun gold came from?  It was a gold colored bead necklace that Jay and Kay cut up to put in their {little} buckets.  It's perfect!

Kay likes to count the gold...
And Ellie likes to dump it...and gather it....and dump it...
We made a paper towel tube into a rainbow that they can slide down.  Right now it looks like they land in the swimming pool when they come out!  But there's gold there too, as promised!


Here's our family turned into {little} leprechauns.  
Jay told me that he read in a book that there are no girl leprechauns--it's strictly a guy thing.  Whatever.  As if girls always have to be pretty little fairies....
So I'm on the lookout for a book that includes the female gender in the leprechaun tales.  Let me know if you know of any!


 I love seeing {little} minds and hands busy imagining and learning.  So {this} was definitely a lucky {little project}. 

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Good Luck Treat Tag Printable

This past week was a {little} extra busy around here.  We had our Nana here, celebrated Ellie's birthday, and all my piano students completed a major national piano test.  I'm a nationally certified teacher in piano performance and {LOVE} teaching.  But this test was not for the faint-hearted!

This test pulled out all the stops with testing in performance, sight reading, theory, transposition, technique, and ear training.  I've never heard so many talented pianists in one day before.  These kids were amazing and worked so hard.  It was more of a {little} by {little} kind of project, since it added up to a big day!

I wanted to send my students with a {little} extra luck so I sent them home with {this little} good luck treat at their lesson.  

Here's a little money-saving tip: I love to buy extra bags of m&m's after Christmas when they are on sale.  I pull out the red ones for Valentine's Day and the green ones for St. Patty's day.  This year I got extra bags of mint m&m's and there were white and green together in them.  I knew they would be perfect for {this little project} in March...and don't worry, the expiration date on those bags of yummy Christmas m&m's isn't even close yet!

For {this little project} I used the "fonts for peas" fonts by Kevin and Amanda on the gift tag.  They are some of my favorite fonts and they are free to download!  

You can find them here.

March seems to be a busy month with all kinds of reasons to send some good luck vibes so I'll share the tag so you can send some good luck too!

Good Luck

  

These {little} tags are simple to make: punched circle, sticker shamrock, green baker's twine, and a printed green tag (above), with green and white m&m's.


Have fun sending someone some extra luck!

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Green Rice Treasure-Hunting Fun

My kids LOVE our rice box. It's like a sandbox for the winter. I hide treasures in it and and they scoop and fill and play with shrieks of, "Look Mom, what I found!"

I put olympic things in recently as well as some fun St. Patrick's day "gold" and other spring fun into our GREEN RICE. The color makes it even more fun!

To see the post about how to color your rice, click here. We've made rice to match many fun holidays-it's a really fun {Little Project}.

This week our science experiment is making "gold" you can check out the details for making your own pennies shiny as gold here and here.

Here's more St. Patrick's Fun from previous posts.

Happy St. Patrick's Day to YOU!

Kickin' it up on St. Patty's Day

I'm not sure that I mentioned on the last post that we've been out of town for over a week now. I'm not around a computer a lot. I actually forgot to pack a green shirt for Kay.  So yesterday I stopped by the dollar store and found a green and pink one.  I added the lettering, as you can see below.

 St. Patrick's Day is one of my FAVORITE DAYS!

I'm not even Irish.

But I taught Irish Step Dancing for nearly 10 years. Needless to say, today is a day that Irish Step Dancers LOVE to celebrate.
These aren't my dancers, since I'm not home to put their photos up. But you get the idea :)


If you haven't discovered Pandora yet, today is your LUCKY day! You go to the site, type in your favorite style, composer, artist, genre and it kicks out your personalized music stream! Seriously! And it is Free! Try putting in Irish, or Irish Traditional, or Riverdance and have a listen!

If you want to discover a little about Irish Step Dancing and add some kickin' fun into your day, check out this video.

I should have posted about our upcoming St. Patrick's Day projects ahead of time so you could join in, but feel free to celebrate a week of Irish fun, we will be!

I have a new obsession: This is my first "Peg Person."  She's an Irish Step Dancer.  Her name is Peggy :)  She is wearing a traditional Irish dancing dress and even has her arms down to her side, like a good irish step dancer should.

She is made from a peg and some Sharpie markers.  Kay loves to play with her!

She was fun to make and hopefully I will get better.

Want to try making some irish dancers too?  

Here are some on Flickr

These are some paper dolls to get here too for just a buck :)

And here are some Irish Step Dancers to color.

We've been spoiled by 2 sets of grandparents lately.  My Mom had some fun ideas for recycling left over Valentine's candy to celebrate today. 

BEFORE:
AFTER:
These hearts are wrapped in green plastic wrap and pasted on a "paint card" that you can get for free at home improvement stores.

If we were home we would definitely be making green frosted cupcakes with leftover candy hearts for shamrocks on them!

This chocolate frog (left over from Val. day) is the perfect green treat for Jay, the frog-loving-boy.

She also made these little bags for the kids to collect their leprechaun gold in.  

My sister works at a craft store and brought the Cricut over to show us.  It's pretty spectacular. It cuts out all kinds of things.  She cut vinyl frogs to hang in Jay's room and lots of paper frogs and frog bookmarks, etc.  It even can cut fabric!  

I put some "steam a seam" on some fabric and she cut all the letters out on the Cricut for the finishing touches on Kay's dollar store shirt.  This photo is before the letters were ironed on.

From our family to yours, I hope you have a kickin' St. Patrick's Day with a fun Little Project!