Polar Bear Addition Activity

Here’s a free polar bear addition activity.

It’s the perfect winter math center activity! Students pick a card and use the number bond to solve. When they are done, they can write an equation or number sentence.

What I like about this activity is that it shows the relationship between the addends and the sum. Students put the two parts in the small circle and slide them to the big circle to figure out the sum. This way, students see what addition looks like.

Students can complete this activity independently or with a partner. To foster more math talk, have students share how they solved the problem with a partner.

You can also modify this activity by giving students a number to decompose the number in more than one way and write a number sentence. This is a great way to build number sense and show students that there are multiple ways to build one number.