Freebie Friday - Bubble Math: Learn To Add Fast

Being able to add quickly in your head is an essential skill not only for more advanced math but also in daily life.  Think about going shopping and being able to add prices in your head quickly to make sure you don't go over budget.  Or think about adding measurements together quickly when you're building something.  Bubble math is an easy way to gain the skill of adding quickly.  You can download the Bubble math packet as a PDF (numbers 1-12) HERE for free and print it off.  If you want to share this resource, please share the link to this blog post.

Inside the bubble math packet are instructions and tips for the teacher on how to do the exercises.  When using these bubbles for addition practice, the student is trying to get to the number in the left bubble.  In the example to the left the number the student is trying to get to is 10.  They are given the number 4 in the top right bubble, and need to fill in the blank bubble with a number that when added to 4 equals 10.  In our example the student fills in the number 6, because 6+4=10.  The student asks himself, 4 plus what number equals 10?

You can also use this packet for subtraction practice by reversing the above process.  For subtraction practice the student would ask himself: 10 minus what number equals 4 and fill in the blank.

What I did with this packet was print it out and put two pages back to back and run them through the laminator.  This way we have double sided laminated sheets that my daughter can use over and over again if she uses a crayola dry erase marker.  It wipes off with a napkin or cloth.  When laminated these sheets are waterproof so you can also wash them if you need to in order to get dry erase marker residue off.  We paired up number sets 1 and 2, 3 and 4, 5 and 6.  Beyond 6 there are 2 pages for each number to 12, so 7 and 7 would go together and so on.  This takes 10 lamination pages if you do it this way.  I like laminating them because it saves paper in the long run if I intend on using the same number set over and over again, and I can also pass this packet on to someone else when we're done with it if it's been laminated and save them the trouble of printing it off again.  The fact that my 6 year old think it's not really math if she gets to use dry erase makers is just a bonus.