Find the Missing Number — Breakfast — Grade 1

This is subtraction with the taken-away part left blank. A group of eggs, pancakes and a banana is shown with the number remaining; the child supplies how many were removed. It nudges a child past one-direction take-away toward seeing subtraction as a relationship — start, change, result — where any one can be the unknown. The breakfast foods are concrete and the numbers within twenty, so the missing part is always reachable by counting, and a child can prove their answer rather than guess it.

Change-unknown subtraction is harder than plain take-away precisely because the answer is the move, not the result — and that extra reasoning is the Grade 1 point. Keeping the numbers within twenty lets a child meet that challenge with strategies they have, counting up from the breakfast foods that remain to the group they started with.

Children who like breakfast take to the puzzle of working backward, and it suits a child ready for a little more than plain take-away. When this feels easy, try find the missing number with camping gear, or find the missing number with easter. You can also browse every subtraction worksheet or the whole breakfast foods collection for grade 1 — each sheet prints cleanly in black and white or plays online for free.