St. Patrick’s Day Math Activities for Upper Elementary

Are you ready to add a pinch of fun to your St. Patrick’s Day math class?

These St. Patrick’s Day math activities will help you create some sham-rockin’ good opportunities for your upper elementary students to practice important math skills while getting into the holiday spirit!

St. Patrick’s Day Math Logic Puzzles and Brain Teasers

Nothing brings a bit of leprechaun-level fun to your upper elementary math classroom like a St. Patrick’s Day logic puzzle or brain teaser!

These fun and festive activities will not only challenge your students’ critical thinking skills but will also bring a smile to their faces.

And what’s more fun than solving a puzzle with a green hat-wearing leprechaun and lucky four-leaf clovers as the subjects?

You can use St. Patrick’s Day logic puzzles and brain teasers for morning work, early finishers, enrichment, math centers, or as a math warm-up activity.

You can grab a a set of 18 different St. Patrick’s Day math logic puzzles and brain teasers in my Teachers Pay Teachers store. These puzzles were created specifically for students in 4th – 6th grade.

Make 17

Roll a six-sided die five times and record the numbers rolled on the board. You might get five different numbers or you might roll a number more than once.

Challenge your students to create an equation that equals 17 using as many of the five numbers as possible. The “goal” is to try to create an equation that uses all five numbers.

Students can use any operation, parentheses, and depending on your students you might want to let them use positive and negative numbers as well. Remind them that they can only use a number twice if it was rolled twice!

Sometimes a solution is found quickly, other times it takes awhile. This is a great exercise in perseverance!

Printable Math Games

Math games are a great way to build student engagement while practicing or reviewing important math skills. When students play math games with a partner or in small groups they get the added benefit of practicing social skills like taking turns, following a set of common rules, encouraging each other and winning/losing a game respectfully.

You can grab a set of St. Patrick’s Day math games for 4th grade or 5th grade in my Teachers Pay Teachers store.

Seasonal math games like the ones shown in the images above are perfect for math centers, small groups, morning work, review days, extra practice or early finishers.

CLICK HERE to see the 4th Grade St. Patrick’s Day Math Games

CLICK HERE to see the 5th Grade St. Patrick’s Day Math Games

Math Equation Picture Puzzles

Algebra skills can be fun and accessible to all of your students when you incorporate math equation picture puzzles into your upper elementary math lessons.

Students will boost their critical thinking skills as they use the order of operations, variables, and substitution to balance equations and find the value of each picture.

Math equation picture puzzles are great to use for math warm-up activities that will hook your students and get them thinking about math.

Solving these St. Patrick’s Day themed puzzles will have your students’ leaping like a leprechaun with excitement!

St. Patrick’s Day Math Color By Number

Add a twist to students’ usual practice routines by using color by number math activities.

Using St. Patrick’s Day-themed color-by-number worksheets is a great way to reinforce math concepts in a fun and engaging way.

Students enjoy solving math problems and seeing a colorful creation come to life at the end of their work.

So add a splash of color to your math class and give color by number worksheets a try!

Lucky Charms Math

Grab a box (or two) of Lucky Charms cereal and add a touch of leprechaun magic to your math activities!

Lucky Charms cereal can be used in many fun ways for St. Patrick’s Day math activities. Here is one of my favorites!

Measure out an equal amount of cereal for each of your students. I recommend ⅓ or ½ cup of cereal per student.

Some questions you might investigate are:

• What percent (or fraction) of your mix is marshmallows? What percent (or fraction) is cereal?
• How many of each marshmallow type do you have?
• What fraction of your whole scoop is rainbow marshmallows? What fraction is clover marshmallows?
• Pick one type of marshmallow. Have each student count the number of that type of marshmallow they have in their scoop of cereal.  Create a line plot using the results each student reports.

There are many more questions and math investigations you are able to do with Lucky Charms cereal. You could also incorporate probability, ratio, finding data landmarks, and weighing marshmallows vs. cereal.

Pot of Gold Probability

Use decorative St. Patrick’s Day gold coins (or regular coins) to experiment with probability in a fun and festive way!

Theoretically, a coin will land on heads 50% of the time and tails 50% of the time. Do an experiment to see if this is what really happens when a coin is flipped.

Give each student a coin and have them flip the coin 10x. Have them record the number of heads and tails they get. Are the results split equally 50-50 between heads and tails?  Why or why not?

Do this again with 20 flips and 30 flips. Do you get different results? Students should find that the more coin flips they do, the closer to a 50-50 split they will get as a result.

A fun extension to this activity would be to compare the probability results when flipping a St. Patrick’s Day plastic coin vs. a real coin!

Incorporating math activities into St. Patrick’s Day celebrations can be a fun way to celebrate the holiday while still focusing on academics. Today I shared some of my favorite ideas, but there are plenty of engaging and St. Patrick’s Day math activities perfect for upper elementary classrooms. So, which math activity do you plan to add to your St. Patrick’s Day festivities this year?

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