Before STEM Challenges were a thing, teachers have made leprechaun traps a St. Patrick’s Day staple.

And don’t get me wrong, even I have a leprechaun trap with a twist up my sleeve every year!

But the longer you teach, the more likely it is when your students get to you that they’ve done that classic challenge already.

That doesn’t mean you can’t do it anyway. It just means you should either give it a twist or try something different.

But why stop there when there are so many options that go beyond your typical leprechaun trap?

Five St. Patrick’s Day STEM Challenge Ideas

See the video walk-through right here 👆

1. Get the Gold

In Get the Gold, students create one or more devices to transfer leprechaun gold from his pot to their own. They’ll use a criteria & constraints list & leprechaun lore as guides.

Content Connections:

• Use decoy “gold” to work with integers
• Estimate and measure mass or weight
• Included in the resource:
  • Identifying even vs. odd numbers
  • Using divisibility rules with 4-digit numbers
  • Using divisibility rules with square roots and exponents

See the video walk-through right here 👆

2. St. Pat’s Snake Snatcher

In St. Pat’s Snake Snatcher, students take on the legend of St. Patrick by creating a tool to remove snakes from Ireland and drop them in the ocean.

Content Connections:

• Camouflage & Mimicry
• Another integers opportunity if you use snakes & fakes
• Legends

See the video walk-through right here 👆

3. Limitless Luck

Do you believe in making your own luck? I do! In Limitless Luck, students attempt to create a coin that always lands heads-up! There’s also an optional horseshoe-like game included in the resource.

Content Connections:

• Simple & compound probability
• Genetics of four-leaf clovers
• Anything to do with “4” (multiples, divisibility rules, etc.)

See the video walk-through right here 👆

4. Guard the Gold

Ever wonder what it’s like to be a leprechaun, always trying to protect your gold? In Guard the Gold, students design and build one or more devices to help a leprechaun guard his pot of gold from thieves.

Content Connections:

• Simple machines
• Light & the science behind rainbows

See the video walk-through right here 👆

5. Leprechaun Lockdown

Yep, it’s a leprechaun trap! I take no issue with the classics, I just like to give them a twist. In Leprechaun Lockdown, students work with a leprechaun lore list and a criteria & constraints list to create the perfect, enticing trap!

Content Connections:

• Simple machines
• Creative writing
• Use leprechaun footprints to do anything with pairs
• Included in the resource:
  • Practice dividing by 2 
  • Identifying addition/subtraction fact families
  • Identifying multiplication/division fact families
  • Identifying equivalent percents, fractions, and decimals

So this year, shake things up and try something new for St. Patricks’s Day STEM!

Let us know how it goes!

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