Addition with Beach Things — Kindergarten

Because the rows vary, the child cannot switch off. A row of buckets, spades and a starfish beside a written number is a straight add-to-the-total; the next row gives the whole and a part and asks for the part still needed to make it. Both are kindergarten work — putting amounts together, and seeing the smaller numbers hiding inside a bigger one — and keeping them side by side with pictured beach things builds the flexible number sense early addition is really about.

Seeing that a handful of beach things can be split into a few here and a few there — and that those parts rebuild the whole — is the number-bond idea at the centre of kindergarten arithmetic. The adding rows and the find-the-part rows practise the two directions of that bond, and keeping the amounts inside ten means a child can rebuild or take apart any total by counting.

Children who like beach things enjoy the change of pace from row to row, and it works well for a small group ready to think in more than one direction. When the numbers feel easy, count a fresh group in addition with birds, or try addition with dinosaurs. You can also browse every addition worksheet or the whole beach things collection for kindergarten — each sheet prints cleanly in black and white or plays online for free.