What do you do when you reach that point in December when every kid is bouncing off the walls and no one has any interest in learning? Combine purposeful review with fun activities! Building confidence and fluency with addition is essential early on. But achieving that level of confidence and fluency takes time, practice and multiple opportunities. So even if your first or second graders have already learned addition within 20, circling back and providing some additional review will likely be helpful for  most students. And those who have already mastered it? Well print the more challenging addition pages included in this download!

Materials Needed for the Christmas Addition Practice:

This activity is super low prep! To begin, you will want to gather a few materials though.

• Printed cut and paste pages (link to my shop at the end of the post)
• Scissors for each student
• Gluestick for each student
• Crayons or colored pencils (optional)

Practice Addition Within 20

In the download, you will first find 2 pages of problems to add numbers within 20, Practice A and Practice B. In order to help Santa out, they have to add up all the presents going into his sleigh.

To begin, they can cut out the sleighs at the bottom of the page.

Once they have solved each addition problem, they glue the sleigh in the corresponding box.

Encourage students to use whatever strategies they prefer as they solve the problems. This might include drawing a number line on a white board or scratch paper. Or it might be making ten to add. Or grabbing a pile of blocks (or other manipulative) to model each addend and then count on to add them together.

After students complete their page, discuss different ideas and strategies as a group. Hearing ways other students thought about and tackled each problem will benefit everyone!

More Christmas Math for K-2:

Looking for fun and engaging Christmas math games that you can use to practice all sorts of math skills in the month of December? This set of Gingerbread Math activities includes hands on practice, simple games, and tasty fun with gumdrops that your kids will love!

LEARN MORE AND GRAB THE GINGERBREAD MATH COLLECTION HERE

Practice Addition Within 50

If you have students who are ready for a bigger challenge, there are 2 additional cut and paste pages, allowing you to easily differentiate.

Practice C includes addition problems up to 50 without needing to regroup.

Practice D includes addition problems up to 50 which require regrouping.

These pages look the same, and are completed the same way, so you can give students different levels if needed.

Or you can start everyone on Practice A and gradually work through each addition page so they can increase in difficulty and apply their knowledge and strategies for addition to larger and more challenging numbers.

I’ll bet your kids will be surprised and proud of themselves when they get to the most challenging addition problems!

I hope these simple and low-prep Christmas addition practice pages provide a fun and easy way to review in the days leading up to Christmas break. Or save them in your sub folder and let your kids complete them in February! Who’s going to mind?!

Whenever you use them, I hope it helps save you some time and sanity!

{Click HERE to go to my shop and grab the FREE Christmas Addition Practice for First Grade!}

Looking for more Christmas Math FUN? Try one of the activities below:

• Christmas Shopping: Money Math Practice {FREE}
• Christmas Make Ten Sort {FREE}
• Christmas Addition and Subtraction Maze Challenges {FREE}
• Simple Problem of the Day Christmas Countdown!

The post {FREE!} Christmas Addition Practice – 1st Grade appeared first on Math Geek Mama.

Once kids have learned how to add and subtract with large numbers and understand the concept of regrouping, they still need extra practice and review. This is just one of those fundamental math skills that kids need to practice and understand deeply so they can move on to more challenging concepts. But that doesn’t mean we have to assign tedious or boring worksheets! Engage your kids with missing number puzzles that will help strengthen their understanding of regrouping and also provide necessary skills practice.

Missing Number Addition and Subtraction Puzzles for Google Slides:

These puzzles take addition & subtraction practice to a higher level. Rather than simply giving kids two numbers to add or subtract, they are given an equation with various digits missing.

For instance, sometimes digits from the addends are missing and sometimes digits from the total sum are missing.

This requires kids to actually think about what addition & subtraction means and how certain digits could be made.

And because these are “puzzles” kids are more excited to try them and solve them. It’s not a math problem–it’s a challenging puzzle!

I do suggest, however, that because these require higher order thinking skills and may prove a bit challenging for some kids, you only assign one or two puzzles at a time.

Giving kids all 10 puzzles at once might feel overwhelming and cause them to give up before they even begin, which is not what we want!

This digital set of puzzles is designed for Google Slides so that you can use and assign them in Google Classroom.

This also allows kids to simply drag and drop numbers around to try and solve the puzzle, which is fun and interactive for kids.

(Note: If you would rather print these out, you can open the slides and then select file–>print. Your kids could then write the missing numbers in.)

What’s Included in the Missing Number Puzzles Sample:

This free download includes a set of 10 interactive puzzles for Google Slides.

This is part of my complete Missing Number Puzzles for Addition & Subtraction set, which includes 20 interactive puzzles for Google Slides and the same 20 puzzles in printer-friendly, half-page versions.

If you’d like the whole set of puzzles, learn more in my shop here!

The free sample also includes an answer key for the 10 puzzles, along with directions for accessing the slides and assigning the puzzles in Google Classroom.

I hope your kids have fun with this set of addition and subtraction puzzles!

{Click HERE to go to my shop and grab the FREE sample of Addition and Subtraction Puzzles for Google Slides!}

The post {FREE} Addition and Subtraction Puzzles for Google Slides appeared first on Math Geek Mama.

*Please Note: Some of the links in this post are affiliate links and help support the work of this site. Read our full disclosure policy here.*

I got the idea for these pages from my daughter’s Singapore math workbook. There are often practice pages that include some sort of riddle or maze which helps her to “self-check.”

This is such a great feature because if she realizes that her answer is not in the maze or the riddle, she can work to correct it herself, without me having to point it out to her.

I also like the maze idea because it makes it a little more fun for her. The challenge is not just answer these problems. The challenge is: can you help Rudolph get to Santa?

Addition and Subtraction without Regrouping:

Included in this download are two pages of addition and subtraction problems that do not require regrouping.

So if you are looking for a way to ease into the more challenging problems, or your kids haven’t worked on regrouping yet, there are some pages for you.

Answer keys are also included for your convenience.

Addition and Subtraction with Regrouping:

This download also includes two pages of addition and subtraction problems which do require regrouping.

Answer keys are provided for these as well.

How to Use the Maze Challenges:

To complete this challenge, simply find the solution to each addition and subtraction problem.

Then, kids color the solution in the grid below.

If their solution cannot be found in the grid, they know they got it wrong and should correct it.

In the end, the colored solutions should form a path from Rudolph to Santa. Therefore, if it does not, they got a solution wrong and should recheck their answers.

Hopefully this simple set of practice pages is a great way for you to review these skills this December.

{Click HERE to go to my shop and download the FREE Addition and Subtraction Mazes!}

And if you’re looking for more, you may also like this Christmas Tree Farm game. This is another fun way to practice adding and subtracting large numbers and work on addition and subtraction with regrouping.

Or if you would like a game that’s not Christmas themed, try this printable board game.

The post Christmas Addition and Subtraction Maze Challenges {FREE} appeared first on Math Geek Mama.

Simple Trick to End the Frustration with Subtraction:

Ok, so I’ll be honest, I’m really not a fan of teaching math “tricks.” Often, they are short cuts that only work under particular circumstances (which are not always made clear to students), and thus cause students confusion later.

Some of these tricks were especially frustrating as a high school teacher, because in the midst of solving a complex algebra problem, my students would need to do some sort of computation with fractions, but could not remember the “trick” they learned, and would therefore solve the problem incorrectly.

So just to be clear, this is not really a “trick,” per se, just an observation and mathematical truth that students can use to potentially make subtraction easier.

To do this, however, they have to have a clear understanding of place value, and an understanding of subtraction and what it represents. Then they will be able to see that the problem will be easier, but the solution will be the same (therefore, solve the easier problem).

For example, if you are given the problem 21-11, that is the same as 20-10. Or if you have the problem 47-17, that is equal to 40-10.

Understanding why this is the case requires algebraic thinking, and will provide a good foundation for solving equations later on (i.e. you can do any operation to one side of the equals sign as long as you do the same thing to the other side).

If you are teaching this tip to your students, start with very simple problems like this, and model why this is true on a number line.

One way to think of subtraction is the distance between two numbers. So essentially, as an example, we’re saying that the distance between 240 and 228 is the same as the distance between 239 and 227. Therefore, I can subtract 239-227 to get the same answer.

So why does this make subtraction easier?

When you get to large numbers and problems that require borrowing (especially with zeros), this process can make things simpler with one small step: subtract 1 first.

Here’s an example that would require a lot of borrowing, and it can be very easy for students (especially those who struggle) to get bogged down in the details and what borrowed number goes where:

Because there are so many zeros, to regroup would require going all the way to the thousands place, and then working back. Instead, subtract 1 from each number first:

This changes the problem to this (which, remember, will give the same solution):

Now, when subtracting these numbers by hand, there is no borrowing or regrouping required.

Obviously, subtraction problems that have lots of zeros will work best to simply subtract 1 from each number.

If you’ve explained why this works, however, students can use this same logic to simplify any subtraction problem, and either make the regrouping less cumbersome, or remove the need to regroup altogether.

Here’s another example that is not so nice and clearcut:

Simply subtracting 1 from each number doesn’t actually change the fact that you have to borrow or regroup. If, however, you subtract 3 from each number:

This changes the problem to this:

Now, there is still some regrouping required, but it’s not as complicated.

The basic goal of this is to create an easier problem and then solve it. By making the numbers on top (or at least some of them) bigger, you can make the subtraction easier.

Not only will this help students increase their number sense and mental math skills, but it will help them to better understand subtraction, as well as build a foundation for later algebra learning.

I would encourage you to start a discussion with your kids to see how they might explain this “trick” and why it works, as well as let them play with numbers to come up with their own way to simplify subtraction problems.

As always, there is always more than one way to solve a math problem, and there will always be more than one way to simplify problems like these. So if your students try something different, check it for accuracy, and then encourage them to “prove” that it will work in all cases.

And most of all, have fun playing with numbers!

What are some helpful ways you have found to teach subtraction? Do you have a trick to end the frustration with subtraction? Share it with us!

Want more tips and encouragement for teaching kids to be confident problem solvers? Subscribe to my weekly email newsletter and get my ebook, Strategies for Problem Solving: Equip Kids to Solve Math Problems With Confidence, for FREE!

The post Simple Trick to End the Frustration With Subtraction Regrouping appeared first on Math Geek Mama.