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Addition worksheets

Addition is not one skill but a sequence of them, and children stall when a sheet skips a rung. These free printable worksheets follow the whole path, from counting two groups of pictures to carrying in a written two-digit sum.

In teaching order

Addition worksheets, easiest first

Each sheet assumes the one above it is comfortable. Start where your child is, not at the top.
Build an Arithmetic worksheet

How addition develops

The first addition a child understands is counting: put the groups together and count them all. Picture addition keeps that honest — the objects are on the page to be touched and tallied, so a sum is a thing that happened rather than a fact to memorize.

The strategies come next, and they are what separate fluent children from slow ones. Counting on means starting from the larger number instead of from one. Number bonds build the make-ten move — 8 + 7 becomes 8 + 2 + 5 — which is the single most useful trick for sums that cross ten. Doubles and near doubles cover a surprising share of the remaining facts: a child who knows 7 + 7 gets 7 + 8 nearly free.

Only after facts within 20 are quick does written two-digit addition make sense. Regrouping is a place-value idea, not a new addition idea: ten ones become one ten and move columns. A child still counting on their fingers for 8 + 7 will not learn carrying from a carrying worksheet — they will learn it from finishing the earlier rung.

Yours to change

Make a addition sheet that fits

Every sheet here can change level, theme, question count, and paper size. Each one prints with an answer key and a picnic basket code that reopens the exact same questions later.