Cute St. Patrick’s Day Counting Collections ideas for 1st grade

We are…assessing, assessing, assessing this week!  But, I decided to add a little IRISH twist to today’s assessment with some St. Patrick’s Day counting collection ideas so we could still celebrate the green holiday while still getting our first grade math assessments finished.

We do Counting Collections once a week to practice counting to 120, skip counting and grouping objects by 10’s.  I decided to reassess my kids and see how well they could do this on their own today. (Normally, they do counting collections with a partner!)  Each firstie got a pot o’ gold (with around 120 pieces of cut, 1×1 yellow squares.)

As is our normal procedure during Counting Collections, my kids counted how many pieces of gold they had in their pot. The only difference is that in our normal counting collections routines, they count with partners. But for our St. Patrick’s Day counting collections, they counted independently.  They can count however they choose, whichever way they understand best, and whichever way is the most efficient way for them to count with *precision.*

Most of them grouped by 10’s and counted.

A few grouped by 5’s.

One boy grouped by 20’s.

This little sweetie counted by 2’s inside of his groups of 10!

Some counted by 1’s.

You could hear a pin drop in my room.  Those babies were so intent on counting to see how “rich” they were!  Who knew math assessments could be so fun!!

Where To Find Materials for St. Patrick’s Day Counting?

You can read more of the detailed scoop on Counting Collections in this blog post and can grab the Counting Collections resource here.