And Why? I just finished making my first one a couple hours ago. My kindergartner had optional homework this week to make one. He wanted to, so we did. And yes, it was kind of fun. But when I was in elementary school, St. Patrick's day consisted of making sure you wore green so no one pinched you. And that was it. No one dyed everything green or left glitter footprints. Or basically turned the thing into April Fools except that all the pranks needed to include green. And no one tried to convince me that there were little mischievous creatures coming to our house, and I needed to try to catch one for 3 wishes or a pot of gold.
When he got the assignment, it just said, "practice the flashcards of numbers 1-20 this week and (optional) make a Leprechaun trap by Friday"--like I was supposed to have as much knowledge of Leprechaun traps as I have of numbers 1-20. I guess I have been living under a rock because I had to google and pinterest this insanity.
Now, I am all for fun, and I actually think this is not a bad assignment for older kids if you set certain parameters (number of mechanisms, etc). This is of course assuming we are all acknowledging that Leprechauns do not exist and if they did, they would never be stupid enough to fall into a shoe box because part of the point of them is that they are nasty clever.
I was really glad this morning that I haven't taught my kids Santa is real because I am really not okay with adding to the things I have to lie about to keep up the ruse. As it is, my son wasn't even a little confused about the existence of Leprechauns and instead of questioning it at all, he started speculating what his teacher was going to do to make it look like leprechauns came to his trap.
We had some fun this morning, but I kind of don't want to make one of these for every kid every year of school. And I refuse to believe that makes me a bad Mom. And lets be honest, this is the exact kind of assignment that when given to a kindergartner or even a lot of other older children is without a doubt going to have to involve mom. My son loves to build things out of cardboard, but there is no way he is allowed to use everything he wanted to without direct supervision and I had to help collect everything and drive him to the dollar store. And if you have looked at pinterest, some of these puppies get really elaborate. So when the trap comes home I am probably putting it away at the top of the closet so we can bring it out again next year if he has the assignment again. And I won't feel the least bit bad about recycling homework.
