Addition Cars

Feb 4, 2021

Use these fun Pack the Car activity mats to engage your students in hands-on, fun and engaging activities for addition. They can be used with play dough, dry erase markers or math equipment.

Your learners can explore

part-part-whole
missing addend
counting-on

Here are a few ideas for using them:

Use with counters

students add counters into the window to make the total

Use bears - or hippos!

a playful variation is for students to use themed math manipulatives for counting
integrate this with a literature focus and read a story or do some writing around a theme that will link to this math activity

Fine motor fun

use play dough and ask students to roll little balls to add to each car - integrating some fine motor into the activity

Draw

let students draw the extra dots (or write the numeral) after you have laminated the cards or put them into a plastic sleeve

Whole class

use the cards as a math warm up
take a few and put them on your board for focus (easel or electronic from the pdf file)
students sit in front of the board and you guide them through adding more to the car to make the total
count as a whole class and ask one child to come forward to model it with magnets or the board pen

during the whole class warm up, students could each have a little whiteboard and record the extra dots as you count - scaffolding them through the count-on process
for example, you say