Addition and Subtraction Regrouping: Games and Activities

An Overview of Regrouping

Regrouping is a skill that will likely be introduced at the second grade level. Your child will be learning to bundle numbers and to add and subtract within 1,000. It is also important for your child to understand place value. Regrouping is often difficult for elementary children, so use the interactive activities below to provide your child with extra practice at home

Roll and Regroup

Before beginning this activity, divide a sheet of paper into three sections labeled ones, tens and hundreds. Ones will be represented using fruit loops, tens will be shown with marshmallows and cookies will represent hundreds. Have your child roll a dice and represent the number rolled on the paper using the edible manipulatives. For example, if he rolls a five, then five fruit loops should be placed in the ones section.

Your child should continue rolling the dice, and adding to the original number. For instance, if the next number rolled is six, then your child will have to regroup some of the fruit loops into marshmallows, because 5 + 6 = 11. (She would show her answer as one marshmallow and one fruit loop.)

To make this activity easier, you can eliminate the hundreds section and choose to focus on tens and ones. To make the activity more difficult, you could have your child use two dice.

Make a Number

For this game, you will need to have three dice. Have your child roll the dice and arrange the numbers in any order to create a 3-digit number. After recording this number, roll the dice again and create a second 3-digit number to work with. It will be up to your child to decide which number should be placed on top so that the two numbers can be subtracted.

Although players will take turns to create the subtraction problems, both players should actively be solving the problems. To adjust this activity, feel free to only use two dice.

Flip It Over!

For this activity, you will need a deck of cards that only contains the number cards. Divide a piece of paper into three sections labeled ones, tens and hundreds. Player one will flip over three cards to form the first number of the problem. Player two will repeat the process to create the second number of the addition problem. Have your child write the created addition problem on the chart to help with the regrouping process.

Each player will add the two numbers, regrouping when necessary. To adjust this activity, you could have your child flip over two cards instead of three.