Shamrock Math Games and Activities

Give your learning a St. Patrick’s Day twist with these shamrock themed math (and a little bit of literacy, too) printables and game ideas. Shamrocks are such a fun shape and they can easily be incorporated into tracing, counting and other simple math activities.

For little ones still learning to write their numbers, this printable from Nurtured Neurons gives them a chance to trace the numbers inside shamrock shapes.

Use shamrocks and numbers to get kids moving with this number line scavenger hunt from No Time for Flashcards. A slightly simpler idea using dice and hunting for shamrocks can be found at Coffee Cups and Crayons. Either of these is a pretty low-prep project to do for one or a couple of children (especially if you already have shamrock shapes on hand).

While you’ve got dice out, find some green things (teddy bear counters, pom poms, buttons, glass counters, or really anything you count, even if it’s not green) and print out and laminate (or put in a plastic sleeve) the clover math mat from The Kindergarten Connection. Roll two numbers and count out the number of each in whatever items you have, write the numbers and add them together.

These printables from Simply Kinder mostly involve basic addition, but there are a couple of subtraction problems in there, too. They feature shamrocks to color and count as well as rainbows with numbers in the clouds. So cute!

Fun Games for Learning has a nice collection of math freebies with a St. Patrick’s Day twist, including dice rolling games, math puzzles, addition, subtraction and multiplication games by grade and more.

Keeping My Kiddo Busy has both math and literacy centers with a holiday theme, which you can get for free by signing up for emails. I spy some sight word printables, rainbow and pot of gold math, writing practice and more.

A classic manipulative in the preschool and early elementary classroom is the snap cube, also known as math cubes, unifix cubes or unit cubes. These little one inch cubes often come in a set of 100 in 10 different colors, and they snap together so they’re easy to use for all sorts of math learning, measuring and more.

No Time for Flashcards has a cute robot printable to use with cubes to measure the height of each robot. That one is free but they also have other printable cube mats that are a paid resource.

Catherine & Co uses math cubes to teach kids about measuring volume. They make a letter from cubes and then measure the volume (there’s a printable worksheet in the post).

Pattern recognition is another fun and easy activity you can do with the cubes. You can use printables like these from Planning Playtime, or just make a pattern from cubes and have kids repeat it or figure out what comes next. There’s another good set of pattern printables at English Created Resources.

Because there are 10 sets of 10 cubes in a pack, these are great for teaching one to one correspondence, counting, sorting and basic addition and subtraction. English Created Resources has great printable number mats you can use to form the number from cubes and count out the number of cubes that corresponds to that number.

ParenTutor has a great collection of snap cube activity ideas, most of which are just pictures, but it’s work taking a look through the post for ideas for using them at home or in the classroom.

To give just a few of their examples, you can match linked blocks to the corresponding number of pieces, use blocks to find different ways to add up to 10, compare numbers and determine which one is more or less, skip counting and weighing different numbers of blocks.

You can also use unit cubes to learn letters, like with these super cute alphabet mats from Fun Learning for Kids. Kids can trace the letter, make it out of cubes and practice writing a word that starts with that letter.

Of course you can also use them to build things, since they are blocks, and there are tons of pattern mats on Teachers Pay Teachers. I also love these dinosaur themed mats from Lets Go to Learn on Etsy.

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