Sandcastle Addition Puzzles

One of my favorite places to go during summer is the BEACH!  Since I know that my students love being seaside too, I was excited to use these motivating sandcastle addition puzzles to review some math facts.

Scroll below to grab your freebie and them make sure to dash over and snag our Editable Math Fact Games, too!

Getting Ready

To prep the addition puzzles, I printed all of the pages on cardstock and laminated them for durability.

Then, I cut out the puzzles and separated the shovel and bucket piece from each matching sandcastle.

As a fun bonus, I chose to use seashells as manipulatives for my students to help them with addition.

Sandcastle Addition Puzzles

To start, I played this game with a small group of students at my teacher table.

I separated the cards into two piles: shovel and bucket pieces and then sandcastle pieces.

Next, I gave each of my students a pile of seashells to use as their manipulatives.

We went around the table and each student took turns solving their addition sentence.

The first student picked 4 +3 as her addition card.

She picked up her shells and counted out a group of 4 seashells first and a group of 3 seashells next. 

The student then counted her total number of seashells:  7.

From the sandcastle pile, she looked for the castle with the number 7 and completed her puzzle.

We continued around the circle, letting each student work each addition sentence until all the sandcastles were matched.

When students were finished with their addition puzzles, I had the children use a recording sheet to write down the addition sentences that they had matched.

The recording sheet was blank, so all that students needed to do was write in their numbers.

The recording sheet was a great way to hold students accountable for the game when it became an independent math center later.

Grab Your Download

Ready to try this fun addition game with your students?

Click the blue download button below to grab your free copy and then hop over and snag some Editable Math Fact Games for even more math fun!