Montessori-Inspired St. Patrick's Day Math Activities

By Deb Chitwood from Living Montessori Now

St. Patrick’s Day is almost here! Thanks to all the sites that share printables online, you still have time to prepare some special St. Patrick’s Day activities.

Today, I want to give some ideas for Montessori-inspired math activities using some great free printables I found online. I’m going to show a number of activities for different levels of math understanding in preschoolers through kindergarteners. Some of the activities are appropriate for early elementary as well.

I normally go through steps for presenting my activity here each month. Since I have a number of activities, I’ll give links to posts that will give presentation ideas so that I don’t end up with the longest post in the world! ;)

St. Patrick’s Day Numbers and Counters

This activity uses the printable March Match, Number Names Game by Carolyn Wilhelm from Wise Owl Factory at PreK + K Sharing. This is a very versatile printable. You’ll notice that you can use the printable for a game. I use it for a number names matching activity later in this post. Here (photo at the top of this post), I used the rainbow number cards for the numbers and St. Patrick’s Day gold coins from a craft store (Michaels) for the counters. You’ll need 55 gold coins for the numbers 1-10. Of course, you may use "lucky pennies" instead of gold coins if you wish.

I like to lay out my numbers and counters in the traditional Montessori way of rows of two counters with a left-over counter centered below the bottom row. This gives a visual impression of odd and even. For more about creating DIY numbers and counters and a link on how to present the lesson, check out my DIY Cards and Counters post.

Counting Leprechaun Gold Activity

This is very similar to the St. Patrick’s Day Numbers and Counters, so you’ll probably want to choose one or the other (or rotate them) for a child who is working on quantity and symbol. Again, this uses 55 gold coins for the numbers 1-10. The printable is Counting Leprechaun Gold from Second Story Window.

For this activity, you obviously won’t have room to lay out all the coins in an odd-and-even layout pattern. Since it’s gold coins, I’d just count the coins into the pots in any placement. For ideas for presenting this activity, check out the directions for 1 Fish, 2 Fish Counting Tray in my last month’s PreK + K Sharing post.

St. Patrick’s Day Number Names Activity

This activity again uses the March Match, Number Names Game printable by Carolyn Wilhelm from Wise Owl Factory. There are six different variations of each number 1-10. You can easily adjust this for the level of your child if you have a homeschool or adjust it for the level of many of the children in your classroom. I’d just recommend removing whichever cards would be confusing if you have a younger child.

When you prepare matching activities, it helps to put matching color-coded dots on the backs of the cards to provide a control of error for the child. You should be able to find some ideas for presentation in the Montessori-Inspired Snowman Letter Activities in my January PreK + K Sharing post.

St. Patrick’s Day Addition Activity

This St. Patrick’s Day addition activity uses the Sums to 10 Clovers printable from Kindergarten Lifestyle. This activity can be used with children who are just starting addition work with concrete manipulatives or with children who are learning addition facts. The printable is designed to be used as a game, which you could prepare as well.

For a simple addition layout, there are many printable pages available in this pack. I’d recommend choosing the addition facts appropriate for your child’s or classroom’s addition work. In the example, I used the addition equations for 5, 6, 7, and 8. This is similar to what I did with the Montessori-Inspired One Fish, Two Fish Addition Tray in my last month’s PreK + K Sharing post. You should be able to easily change the presentation there for this activity.

St. Patrick’s Day Place Value Activity

I LOVE the Montessori golden beads for giving children a concrete understanding of the decimal system! For this activity, I used the St. Patrick’s Day Place Value printable by Sarah Hopf at Teachers Pay Teachers along with Montessori golden beads for tens and units and a small felt mat from a craft store (Michaels).

It’s fine to use ten bars with bead bars for the units instead of individual golden unit beads. If you use the individual unit beads, you may also add a little cup to the right of the tens for the unit beads instead of lining up the units to the right of the tens.

Check out my DIY Bead Bars post for links to lots of ideas for making your own bead bars and links to presentations for teens and tens that can be adapted. If you have another manipulative for place value, you could use that in place of the Montessori beads.

NOTE: I have links to many more Montessori-inspired St. Patrick's Day Activities of all types at Living Montessori Now!

Links to more great St. Patrick’s Day math printables:

• St. Patrick’s Day Pack from Over the Big Moon
• St. Patrick’s Day {Expanded} from 2 Teaching Mommies
• Over the Rainbow Money Match by Elisabeth Unruh at Teachers Pay Teachers
• 5 Little Shamrocks – Free Printables from from Mommy Lessons 101
• Leprechaun Squeeze Game from Over the MoonBow
• St. Patrick's Day Printables from Ironic Adventures
• Luck of the Leprechaun Place Value Game by Owl Things First at Teachers Pay Teachers

Have a fun St. Patrick's Day! :)



Deb Chitwood is a certified Montessori teacher with a master’s degree in Early Childhood Studies. Deb taught in Montessori schools in Iowa and Arizona before becoming owner/director/teacher of her own Montessori school in South Dakota. Later, she homeschooled her two children through high school. Deb is now a Montessori writer who lives in Colorado Springs with her husband of 36 years and their cat of 10 years. She blogs at Living Montessori Now.

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