In the spirit of collaboration and sharing, I am delighted to provide the first of what I hope is many activities that I am offering FREE to enhance your differentiated math instruction.  I LOVE St. Patrick’s Day.  With a name like McGuire and three little boys with Irish names of their own, the green holiday of Ireland ranks second in my favorite holidays only to Valentine’s Day  because my oldest son was born on February 14th.

This activity is tiered to address the different levels of readiness of your students.  It focuses on the Kindergarten Common Core Math Standard:  K.OA.5 Fluently add and subtract within 5, but with the three different tiers, it would be useful in first and second grade as well. 


I have some kindergarten honeys that are fluently adding to 10, so this activity allows me to challenge those students that are ready to move on and also addresses those students that have yet to master the basic standard.  I address thier learning profile and multiple intelligences by giving them some choices as to what they would like to use to solve the problems.  Some of my students are still more comfortable using manipulatives and for them I have gold nuggets (spray painted garbonzo beans) and for others, they prefer a number line. 

If you’d like it, click HERE and grab it for FREE from my TpT store and leave me some feedback.  I’d love to know what your think of it and how it can be changed or improved.