Doubles to 20 with No Pictures: Eight Facts and a Work Box

Eight cards, eight doubles, and above every one of them a white box with nothing inside it. This 1st grade doubles-halves page prints no pictures at all: just the pink double label, an empty panel faintly dotted like squared paper, and the fact underneath with a box for the answer. 7 + 7 =, 2 + 2 =, 4 + 4 =, 5 + 5 =, 3 + 3 =, 9 + 9 =, 6 + 6 =, 10 + 10 =. Between them they run right across the doubles range a first grader is asked to know, from four up to twenty.

An empty work box is a deliberate offer rather than an instruction. A child who still needs to see nine things can draw nine dots and nine more, and the page will not stop them; a child who knows the fact writes the answer and leaves the box white. That makes the sheet a measure as well as an exercise, and the useful reading is not the answers but the boxes. Doubles are worth this kind of attention because they carry so much else: the near doubles, the halves, and later the twos. Eight facts on one page is enough to see which of them are secure and which are still being worked out.

Print the PDF free and time nothing; the page has done its job on the day the boxes stay empty, not on the day it is finished quickest. This belongs after the picture versions rather than instead of them, so keep doubles to 20 with pictures for anyone who needs a group to count. Halves to 20 with just the numbers is the matching sheet, and doubles and halves to 20 mixes both operations across eight numeric cards.