Holidays

DIY Leprechaun Trap Craft

February 22, 2026

Easy St. Patrick’s Day Activity for Kids

DIY leprechaun traps can be a new tradition to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day. It can help encourage some hands-on learning and using your imagination. This craft only requires simple supplies you might already have at home and your creative mind. A perfect rainy day project for the whole family.

It is okay if you don’t actually catch a real leprechaun because this craft is all about having light-hearted fun while playing pretend.

Ready to make some St. Patrick’s Day Magic?

Materials:

A shoebox or cardboard box (any size is fine)
Color construction paper (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple)
Cotton balls
Tape
Glue
Scissors
String or twine
1 Wooden chopstick or any wooden stick
St. Patrick’s Day decorations, stickers, online images, etc…
Green wrapping paper (optional), easiest to wrap your box, but green paper works fine

Directions:

Grab your box and make sure one opening is secured and taped down. While the other opening, you just fold in the box flaps. You can tape the box flaps down, if needed.
One opening is taped down, while the other opening had the box flap folded in.
Now start wrapping the outside and inside of your box with paper and secure it with tape.
Next is the fun part, decorating the trap. Use stickers, foam stickers, or you can freestyle it and just draw a bunch of shamrocks or cut out some yellow circles for gold coins. Be as creative as you want. I found most of St. Patrick’s Day’s images from Canva for free.
Add funny phrases to your trap. Some examples are: Free Gold, Pot of Gold Inside, Follow the Rainbow, Totally Not a Trap, and Surprise Inside.
Now you will make a rainbow bridge. Cut out strips of paper in red, orange, yellow, green, blue and purple. It does not have to be perfect; you can just eyeball it.
Align each paper next to each other and glue each strip one after the other. Set aside and let dry.
Grab a few cotton balls and fluff them up a little bit so it looks like clouds.

Rainbow bridge with clouds
Glue down the cotton balls on the right and left sides of the rainbow bridge and set aside to dry.
Next, set up the box like a trap. Place it faced down, and get your wooden stick placed underneath to hold up the box.
Since I used a wooden chopstick, I poked a small hole into the box so it would hold up the trap securely. Do not poke it all the way through the box; just enough to keep the box up. But if you have a wooden stick with a split notch on one of the ends, then that is perfect.
Next, get the string and tie it around your wooden stick to make the trigger line. Make the trigger line as long or short as you need.
The last step is to put inside the trap some enticing gold coins, Rolo candy, Lucky Charms cereal, Ferrero Rocher chocolates, etc. Don’t forget to add the rainbow bridge you made earlier and place it in front of the trap.