Vertical addition worksheets

About this worksheet

The stacked layout is not decoration. Writing numbers one above the other lines up the place values physically, so ones sit with ones and tens with tens, and the column method becomes something a child can see rather than something they have to hold in their head. That is why the standard algorithm is taught this way everywhere.

It is also where most avoidable mistakes come from. A two-digit number written one column too far left, a carried digit squeezed in where it cannot be read, an answer that drifts out of its column — none of these are arithmetic errors, but they all produce wrong answers. Practising the layout on numbers a child can already add is the cheapest way to remove them.

These sheets mix problems that need carrying with problems that do not, which is the realistic case once both have been learned separately. If your child is still meeting one of them, the sheets for addition without regrouping and addition with regrouping isolate each in turn. Every page prints with an answer key and reopens from its picnic basket code.