We’re doing the letter L, so I’ve been creating a variety of ladybug math printables. After several months of blogging, I’ve finally made something that challenged my Five, who is just finishing kindergarten. It didn’t take too much convincing to get her to try this missing addend activity. She ended up going through the entire stack of 45! As I write this she is trying to get her four-year-old brother to do them. He’s resisting. “Do you want to watch me do them?”
Ladybug Missing Addend Activity
I made a set of 45 flip cards for the numbers 2-10. Here’s a sample:
I printed the cards on heavy paper and laminated them (this is not necessary, but I wanted them to last). Then I printed the question mark cards (pages 16-20 of the file) on red construction paper and laminated those too. I taped them to the top of the white cards with clear packing tape so that my daughter could flip them backward.
My daughter held each card and figured out the missing addend. After she gave me the answer I asked her to explain how she got it. This is important — for your child to articulate her thinking process, for you to get a glimpse into her problem-solving skills, and to provide a teaching opportunity. You can suggest other ways to get the answer. You might also be impressed by what your child comes up with.
When my Five was figuring out this one (below), she correctly answered “6.” I asked how she figured that out. “The first side was missing one, so I added it to the other side.” In other words, she knows that 5+5 equals 10, so since the first side had only 4, if you do 5+1, you get 6. I had no idea she could this kind of mental math — and wouldn’t have found out if I hadn’t ask her to explain her thinking.
Here are four different ways she found the answers:
1) Counting up on fingers
2) Counting backward from the big number
3) Counting up by doing tally marks in the air
4) Doing various forms of mental math (see the example above)
If you’re interested in printing the pages for certain numbers, here’s the breakdown:
pages 1-2 … missing addends for #2-4
pages 3-5 …missing addends for #5-6
pages 6-7 …missing addends for #7
pages 8-12 …missing addends for #8-9
pages 13-15 …missing addends for #10
Get your free ladybug missing addend cards!
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