Measuring Leprechaun Pots Math Activity

I am so excited to have Malia from Playdough to Plato here today with a fun math activity for you! 

‘Tis the season for rainbows, shamrocks and pots of gold so I was excited to pull together a fun, St. Patrick’s Day math activity for my four year old.

Measuring Leprechaun Pots gives kids plenty of practice measuring (that one’s pretty obvious) but it also teaches them how to compare lengths.

To Prep

I grabbed a pack of construction paper, a white crayon, a ruler, a pair of scissors and a hole punch. (It’s kind of a lengthy supply list, but I promise the prep work was pretty fast.)

I cut out three different sized leprechaun pots and used the crayon and ruler to draw a straight line across each middle. Then I punched a pile of gold coins from a sheet of yellow construction paper.

To Play

I gave my four year old a couple of minutes to play with the gold coins and leprechaun pots. (It’s not every day you have the chance to touch gold, after all.) When he was ready, I explained that we were going to use the coins to measure the width of each pot.

“Let’s make a prediction,” I said. “What pot do you think is going to use the fewest pieces of gold?”

“Hmmm…” he replied thoughtfully. “This little one. I bet it won’t use very many at all.” I encouraged my son to test his theory by placing one gold coin on the left edge of the pot and then laying coins side-by-side next to it.

“It took three!” he announced when he was finished.

“Now let’s see how many each of the other pots use.” My son quickly got to work spreading gold across each middle.

When he finished measuring each pot of gold, we talked about his findings. Among the questions I asked were:

• • What pot took the most coins? The least?
  • What pot was the widest? The skinniest?
  • How many more coins did the biggest pot use compared to the smallest?
  • If you found a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, what sized pot would you want? Why?

I hope your little leprechauns enjoy measuring pots of gold as much as mine did. Luck ‘o the Irish to you!!

Meet Malia:

Malia is a National Board Certified elementary teacher turned founder of Playdough to Plato – a site sharing fun learning activities for kids. Follow along by on Pinterest or Google+.

Make sure to check out her other fun St. Patrick’s Day learning activities like her Rainbow Jar Science Experiment and Leprechaun Word Family Pots too!