St. Patrick's Day Number Fun! {FREEBIE included}

I'll be honest and say that I don't theme a lot of my maths and literacy activities to special days and holidays.  I like to be able to use resources whenever my students need them, not according to the time of the year.  I tend to do themed activities in subject areas like art and writing, where I don't have to prepare laminated resources and can display the work on a bulletin board to get maximum bang for my buck. :)

In saying that.... there's something about St. Patrick's Day that inspires a bit of fun!  Is it the leprechauns?  Maybe the rainbows?  Who knows - but I do have some cute activities up my sleeve that I love to use in March.

I love to use 'Roll and Cover' as a familiar activity with my kidlets because it's so easy to differentiate.  I start the with number recognition and move on to addition and subtraction as the year goes on.  All you need is a mat per child (I like have my kidlets play this game in partners during math center time) and some dice.  You can use counters or cubes to cover the numbers, or grab some gold coins from the party section of your local dollar store.

For 'Roll & Add' or 'Roll & Take', children roll 2 dice and use either addition or subtraction skills to figure out which number on their mat to cover.

By printing in blackline you have a different activity - choose 'Roll & Color' either to save ink or to use as a recording sheet for your kidlets to glue into their math workbooks.

Click on any of the images above to check out the resource that these pages come from! 
One of my all-time-fave games to use in math centers is 'Race to 20'! In my TpT store you can find 3 of these for free - one of which is St. Paddy's Day themed!  

This is a super simple game for children to play - they simply roll the die and add counters to the tens frame on their game board.  The first to collect 20 is the winner!  You can either use regular counters or gold coins.
If you're not in the mood to create laminated resources to have some St. Patrick's Day fun in your classroom, there's a few easy props you can use instead!  Use gold coins or rainbow pom poms instead of counters, print worksheets on green paper or pretend that a naughty leprechaun has 'hidden' things or turned them upside down when explaining activities, or allow your kidlets to use rainbow colors in their workbooks. :)

Beginning Sounds Clip Cards! An easy-peasy literacy center

I'm a big fan of using the "Same same, but different!" approach with activities in my classroom!  I like to teach my class how to complete a variety of tasks, and then use the same activity across different subjects and skills as the year goes on.  This is the perfect strategy to use with literacy centers because it will save you a lot of time explaining tasks - kidlets will see an activity that they know how to complete and get started right away! For this reason, I am a BIG fan of clip cards!  They are so quick and easy to prepare and are perfect to use as a center task, fast finisher option, or even as one-on-one support materials.  

In my classroom you'll find clip cards that cover lots of different skills and concepts - number recognition, counting, punctuation, money, and of course phonics!

These beginning sounds clip cards encourage little learners to apply their phonics skills. They look at each picture, determine the beginning sound, and clip a peg onto the two that match the letter in the middle.  Clipping the pegs on adds an interactive fine motor element to this task - bonus! I usually use regular clothes pegs, but you can find all sorts of novelty pegs and clips if you'd like to use something different!

Make them self-correcting by placing a small dot on the back of the correct answers, using either a sticker or marker.  Children will clip their choices and flip the card over to see if they match!  You can use these cards as skill practise, as an informal assessment tool, or even as intervention work later in the year for those kidlets who need a little help to consolidate their beginning sounds knowledge.

Click on either of the images in this post to check this resource out in my TpT store!