Add & subtract mixed numbersDenominators to 8
Name: Date:
Add or subtract. Write each answer as a mixed number in simplest form.
1438+434=
2413−267=
3513−127=
4558−156=
5127+312=
6227+312=
7334−218=
8578+516=
Adding and subtracting mixed numbers worksheets
A mixed number is a whole and a fraction traveling together, and adding two of them is easy right up to the moment the fraction parts make more than one. These free printable worksheets are built around that moment, with an answer key.
If they get stuck
Adding and subtracting mixed numbers
The answer key prints on a separate page.
What's on this sheet
Two things make this harder than adding plain fractions, and both happen at the boundary between the whole and the fraction. Adding, the fraction parts can make more than a whole: 2 3/4 + 1 1/2 is not 3 5/4, it is 4 1/4, and the extra whole has to be carried across. Subtracting, the top fraction can be smaller than the bottom one: 3 1/4 − 1 3/4 cannot take three quarters from one quarter, so a whole is borrowed and broken into quarters first. Everything else is the fraction arithmetic a child already has.
Why this sheet works
So the sheets are dealt to contain both. Questions that cross a whole and questions that do not are drawn as separate groups, which means a page never comes back as eight comfortable sums that never test the carry — that split is the standard, not a garnish on it.
How this one works
4 + 4
4+4
4=4
4=4
4+4
+=
+=
4+4=8
+=
4+4=8
=1
+=
4+4=8
=9
- A mixed number is a whole and a fraction stuck together. Deal with them separately — wholes with wholes, eighths with quarters.
- The fraction halves are different sizes, so cut both into eighths first: 4 3/8 is 4 3/8, and 4 3/4 is 4 6/8.
- The fractions go together first: 3/8 + 6/8 = 9/8.
- Then the wholes: 4 + 4 = 8.
- But 9/8 is more than one whole — 8/8 is 1 — so it splits into 1 and 1/8. Give that whole one to the wholes: 8 + 1 = 9.
- So the answer is 9 1/8.