I first heard about the leprechauns when I was helping in a first grade classroom years ago. Those little mischievous guys and gals would sneak into the classroom at recess and lunch and mess with everything. They’d put all the chairs up on the desks or hang posters upside down. It was all rather silly. In fact, the students discovered many leprechaun tricks that we adults didn’t even know about. They were on the lookout for anything out of the ordinary.
The leprechauns do visit our house every St. Patrick’s Day; we invited them. They don’t get too elaborate, but the kids like their visit. The leprechauns write in green on mirrors and tubs and toilets (they find that green whiteboard markers work well). Mostly, they just leave tiny green footprints. Sometimes they write in their special leprechaun handwriting things like, “You can’t catch me!” All very silly.
Here are some other simple things the leprechauns do when we aren’t looking: (They have to be pretty obvious since our house usually looks pretty chaotic in its normal state…)
-put chairs backwards or on the table
-hang wall pictures or fridge pictures upside down
-put green (food coloring) in the toilets
-put our silverware upside down in the drawer
-hang calendars upside down
-put the pillows at the foot of the bed
-switch toothbrushes around
And so on. But what I love about our leprechauns is that they always clean everything up when they finally leave late St. Patrick’s Day night.