Charleroi students try to ‘trap’ a leprechaun for St. Patrick’s Day

By TAYLOR BROWN
tbrown@yourmvi.com

Leprechauns, attracted by rainbows and gold, broke into a Charleroi Area kindergarten classroom Tuesday night.
Kindergarten teacher Melissa Vitali took to social media on St. Patrick’s Day to show her followers the chaos left behind after her students tried their best to catch them with cleverly-designed traps, made with help from student teacher Abigail Norris.
Norris is a senior at California University of Pennsylvania working towards her master’s degree in pre-4 elementary education. She has been with the class of 18 students since January.
Vitali said she came up with creative projects and lessons this week for St. Patrick’s Day.
With help from Norris, students were divided into teams to discuss, plan and build their traps.
Vitali said the room was all giggles Wednesday morning when students returned to their classroom.
On Monday, the students worked in teams to come up with a plan for their best trap.
“The kids have had fun this week, they liked trying to figure out the best way to trap a leprechaun,” Vitali said. “Some of their ideas were really inventive, using lasers, and trained spiders were discussed, but they settled for yarn and popsicle sticks.”
On Tuesday, they used boxes, construction paper, plastic cups, yarn and popsicle sticks to build the traps themselves.
Students were excited to return to class Wednesday to see if their traps worked.
While they did not catch any leprechauns, they got a kick out of the mess left behind during their quick escape.
“This morning the leprechauns got a little wild when they got to our room and saw the traps,” Vitali said. “We didn’t catch any leprechauns but they left some chaos in our room with green confetti everywhere, streamers hanging from the ceiling, green footprints on the tables and cupboards, there was even green water in the toilet.
Students checked their traps before leaving Wednesday to find surprises, gold coins left inside leprechaun trail mix, left behind by their tiny friends.
“There was a lot of giggling in the room this morning,” Vitali said. “I love seeing their smiles.”