We love incorporating math games for kids into holiday activities. This gold coin hide-and-seek game is perfect for St. Patrick’s Day and provides practice in counting and comparing numbers. (There’s even a free printable label sheet so you can make your own pots of gold for the game!)
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Here’s a fun and easy activity for St. Patrick’s Day! This is seriously the easiest math game setup and play with your children or students, and it can be adapted for a wide range of ages too.
In this St. Patrick’s Day math game, children go on a search looking for hidden gold coins to put in their pots of gold. When the search is over, kids count their coins to see how many they found.
Math Games for Kids: Gold Coin Hide-and-Seek
Materials for Math Game
- Plastic or paper cup
- Plastic gold coins, chocolate coins, or pennies
- Tape (optional)
- Free printable labels for cups (optional)
Directions for Math Game
1. Start by making your pots of gold. Write each child’s name on a label. Cut out the labels and tape them to a cup. Now they have their pots to fill up with gold!
2. While the children are not looking, hide the gold coins (or pennies) all around the designated game area (your classroom, certain rooms in your home, or outside). You’ll want to hide quite a few so the kids end up with lots of coins to count at the end.
3. Have children search for the coins, placing all the coins they find in their cups. You can set a time limit for searching or just play until most of the coins are found.
4. Once the game has ended, kids can count how many coins they found. If you want to make the game competitive, children can compare the number of coins they each found- the child with the most coins is the winner.
Once we were done playing, the kids enjoyed hiding the coins for each other to find!
Check out our ebook ABCs and 123s! You’ll find 40+ ways to encourage children to explore letters and numbers through play!