St. Patrick’s Day Math Activities

I have written a lot of St. Patrick’s Day posts over the years (see for example, St. Patrick’s Day STEM, leprechaun traps, class party games, shamrock learning activities and printables, just to name a few) but it looks like I’ve never done a St. Patrick’s Day math post, or it’s been long enough that I have no memory of it.

Adding holiday content to your everyday learning is lots of fun and there are a lot of ways to add shamrocks, leprechauns and pots of gold to your math activities in the classroom.

Worksheets for Preschoolers has a simple count and circle the number coloring sheet for kiddos learning to count and match the count to the numeral. Made by Teachers has a free (login required) math worksheet with one number listed that asks kids to write the number that comes before and after. Kindergarten Worksheets and Games has a couple of hundreds chart coloring sheets.

Older kids can practice multiplication facts and color in shamrocks and other St. Patrick’s Day symbols with these printables from The Curriculum Corner. XOXO Erin Smith has similar color by division sheets.

Your Schoolhouse has a variety of St. Patrick’s Day learning printables including on where symbols are used for math problems so kids can figure out what the symbols stand for and one with shapes on a coordinate grid.

If you’re OK with using food in the classroom, these activities from Homeschool Preschool use Lucky Charms cereal for sorting, counting and graphing projects.

There’s a fun looking project on area and perimeter with a St. Patrick’s Day twist at Ashleigh’s Education Journey. If you scroll down in the post you can see it, but I can find the printable shown in her Teachers Pay Teachers store. Still, you could do something similar by having the kids design a leprechaun town either by telling them what they need to include and how big each place needs to be or letting them design and then having them figure out the area from there.

Growing Up Ladybug and How to Become a Butterfly are both by Stepanka Sekaninova and illustrated by Linh Dao, and they came out at the same time and are on similar themes, so let’s look at them together.

Growing Up Ladybug is narrated by Mariella, a seven-spot ladybug. She talks about the parts of a ladybug, where they live, different kinds of ladybugs, why humans love them, their defenses against predators and the life cycle of a ladybug.

The drawings are cute if not always scientifically accurate, it’s not in such a way that’s likely to confuse kids (who probably already know that ladybug mamas don’t push their larval babies around in strollers, for instance.

It’s a good general description of the life cycle of a lady bug and why we like having them around.

About the book: 32 pages, hardcover. Published 2026 by Albatross Media. Suggested retail price $16.95.

Similarly, How to Become a Butterfly covers the life cycle of a butterfly, starting with caterpillars eating burning nettle leaves. (Here Amanda is the narrator.) The book talks about a few of the more than 18,000 daytime butterflies in the world as well as other creatures that live in the meadow (there’s that ladybug again, along with crickets, bees and other bugs).

It also covers some of the enemies of caterpillars like wasps and spiders, and the defenses that caterpillars use to try to prevent being eaten. It illustrates how caterpillars grow and change as they molt and prepare to pupate, and what a caterpillar looks like before and while it is forming its chrysalis. And while the book uses the word metamorphasis it doesn’t really talk about what happens between the caterpillar forming a chrysalis and the butterfly hatching.

This butterfly is a peacock butterfly, and once it hatches the book covers the parts of a butterfly and the life cycle. It also talks about nocturnal moths (though it says nocturnal butterflies are “usually called moths” when moths are actually a different species) and what butterflies do at night.

I’m maybe a little hard on this book because my daughter is a butterfly expert from way back, but it is still cute and good for the very basic basics of the butterfly life cycle.

Both books would be fun additions to your bookshelf for younger kids starting to learn about different animals or who have an interest in insects.

About the book: 32 pages, hardcover. Published 2026 by Albatross Media. Suggested retail price $16.95.

Have you read?

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