Community Helpers Addition and Subtraction Within 20

Print the page and read the directions with your child: Use the pictures to solve each number sentence. A helper with an X is taken away. When they finish, check the work together with the answer key.

Six number sentences, each above a row of helper pictures: police officers, chefs, mail carriers, nurses, firefighters and farmers. Three are addition and three are subtraction, and some have the missing number in the middle or at the start, such as 16 take away a number equals 10. The directions on the page read: Use the pictures to solve each number sentence. A helper with an X is taken away. An answer key is included.

Yes, both. We made it for 1st Grade addition, and the page works the same whether it lands on a kitchen table or a center rotation. At home, most families go through it together and talk the answers out loud, and that talking is where most of the learning happens with mixed addition and subtraction facts. In class it runs well as independent work while you pull a small group. Print one copy or thirty, whichever the day needs.

When a page mixes plus and minus signs, students have to read each sign before they work. This builds the habit of checking the operation instead of repeating the same move.

Equal means both sides of an equation have the same value, like 8 + 4 = 7 + 5. Not equal means the values differ, so students write the not equal sign. This builds the idea that the equal sign means the same as.

Use it after your child has practiced adding and subtracting separately. Check it with the answer key and note which facts took the longest, then return to the strategy sheets for those facts.

They support 1.OA.C.6 (add and subtract within 20) and 1.OA.D.7 (true and false equations).

By the end of first grade, students should fluently add within 10 (CCSS 1.OA.C.6) and solve addition problems within 20 using strategies like counting on, making ten, and decomposing numbers. They should also add within 100 using place value understanding (1.NBT.C.4).

Start with adding a two-digit number and a one-digit number, then progress to two two-digit numbers. Use place value understanding: add the tens first, then the ones. Base-ten blocks and place value worksheets make this concrete before moving to abstract equations.

Key strategies include counting on from the larger number, making a ten (e.g., 8+5 becomes 8+2+3), using doubles (6+6=12) and near-doubles (6+7=6+6+1), and decomposing to known facts. Worksheets that practice each strategy separately help students build fluency.