St. Patrick’s Day Math Activity (Simple for Toddlers)

 Inside: This St. Patrick’s Day math activity is a fun way to work on simple counting skills. Download the free printable, add coins, and use independently or in groups. Better yet, go on a treasure hunt and use the coins with the printable!

Our older toddlers and young preschoolers love gold coins. When we bring them out for St. Patrick’s Day, they are included in so many of our learning centers. So, naturally, I wanted to use them as a simple counting activity that could be at our table but also used in a group.

In fact, we ended up using the printable after finding gold coins on a treasure hunt!

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Setting up this activity:

Make as many copies of the shamrock printable as needed. Since I was doing this as a group activity, I made one for each of my students.

I like to laminate mine so that we can tuck them into our theme boxes, using them year after year. Plus, they are more durable with those busy hands that like to fold everything! (I use this laminator and love it, by the way.)

Playing this St. Patrick’s Day Math Activity

During our circle time, I showed the children how to place the coins on the printable from 1 to 3, counting while doing so.

Going on a gold coin hunt:

I then placed all the gold coins in our black “pot” and hid them in 3 different rooms that were off our building’s big activity area.

I placed all of the shamrock printables on the carpet in the main area.

In each room I instructed the children to find ONE gold coin and place it on one of the printables. (Because our children are so young, I did not assign a printables for specific children. They could put their coins on any of the printables. Our goal was to have every circle covered with a coin.)