Pencil Addition Puzzles

My oldest daughter loves to do puzzles.  When she was in Kindergarten, I would try to make as many puzzle activities as I could to help her practice the different concepts we were working on.  These addition pencils was just one of the activities I made for her to practice her addition facts.  

These pencil puzzles make a great math center for kindergarten or first grade.  When I used them with my daughter, I would just give her a set of pencils and ask her to put them together as she solved the problems.  

She would always line them up in a long straight line as she solved each addition fact.  She would end up having a line of puzzles from our front door all the way into our living room!  I know she loved the fact that these puzzles were hands on and allowed her to demonstrate her knowledge of addition facts without having to write all the answers down on a sheet of paper.  

I have recently learned about task boxes, so I have been going back through my older items and organizing them into these task boxes.  My pencil puzzles fit perfectly into the task boxes I have purchased.  This allows for easy center storage and easy center set up!  I can now just pull out the box and the center is ready for my child to use (my third child is currently in kindergarten and just learning to add).  Besides task boxes, these cards can be used as a small group activity, a table top center or as an independent math center for students to practice on their own or with a partner.

Back to School Addition Pencil Puzzles

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Subtraction Facts Flash Cards and Math Mats for Comparing Differences

Becoming fluent in subtraction is one thing every child will need to move on to higher maths.  Students need to be able to quickly determine the difference.  These math mats give students a variety of ways to practice subtraction fact fluency while also comparing differences of different subtraction problems.

With this subtraction math mat, students will draw a math problem and match it to the difference.  This helps students to work through subtraction problems in a fun way that doesn't involve your typical worksheet.  Students can also see which subtraction problems have the same differences.

With this mat, students will match subtraction problems with the same difference.  They will begin to recognize related subtraction facts using this sorting mat.

This mat allows students to compare the differences between two subtraction problems.  Students will choose two subtraction facts and place them on the mat to make the number sentence true.

Here is another mat for practicing related subtraction mats.  Students will choose two numbers and place them on each side of the mat, then look for subtraction facts with those differences.

Subtraction Flash Cards and Math Mats for Comparing Differences

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Addition Flash Cards and Sorting Games for Comparing Sums up to 20

I have been working pretty hard the last few weeks on updating some of my older products to give them more value.  This one focuses on addition fact fluency and comparing sums as well as related addition facts.  Each mat can have multiple uses, as I will explain below.

First off, this set contains one addition fact card for each addition problem with single digit addition within 20 as well as addition with 10 as an addend.  I printed my addition fact cards on colored paper so they can easily pop against the sorting mats.  In addition to using these cards on the mats, they can be used as a matching game, in memory, or as standard flash cards.

This sorting mat can be used for any sum up to 20, and can be used to target specific students who need more or less difficult addition problems.  Simple place the number cards in the rectangle spaces and allow students to sort the addition problems according to their sum.  

This mat is designed to compare sums.  Students will choose two math problems and arrange them on the mat so that each row is true.  The greater than, less than and equal to symbols are also included on their own card so this comparison activity can be done without the mat.

This mat is my personal favorite, and is one of the new mats I added to this set.  Students will pull a math fact card and match it with a math fact with the same sum.  There us one mat that includes sums within 10, and another mat that includes sums within 20.

This mat is the addition within 20 mat in this set, and instead of using the addition fact cards for matching the sums, I used the number cards to answer each problem.  This is to just show another way to use the addition matching mats.

These printable addition sorting math centers can be found here:

Addition Flash Cards and Sorting Games for Comparing Sums up to 20

BOOM Card Version of this activity:

Addition Sorts and Identifying Related Facts Boom Cards

Google Slides Version of this activity:
Addition Related Facts and Comparing Sums Google Slides

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