Water for Schools
Menu

Classroom activity Grade 1 Math

Pipers Green's Hydrant Hunt: A Grade 1 Make-Ten Station Game

A 30-minute grade 1 station game where pairs travel to five paper fire hydrants posted around the room and solve a make-ten fact at each one.

Objectives

  1. Students will solve five addition and subtraction facts within 20 at posted stations.
  2. Students will use a ten frame to make a ten while adding.
  3. Students will name which two numbers they combined to make a ten.

Vocabulary

Key words: hydrant, make a ten, station, ten frame

Teacher overview

Pipers Green is a made-up town whose water crew walks the streets every spring to check that each fire hydrant still turns and still flows, and a crew that misses one hydrant leaves a block without a place to hook a hose. This activity turns that route into a station hunt: five paper hydrants go up around the room, each carrying one addition or subtraction fact within 20, and pairs travel the route with a clipboard. A pair may not leave a hydrant until both partners agree on the answer and have shown it on the ten frame, which is what forces the make-ten move to happen out loud rather than in silence. Groups of two work best, and the room needs enough space for five pairs to stand apart.

Activity Directions

  1. Before class, tape the five hydrant cards around the room at student eye level, spaced so that two pairs are never crowded at one card. Card 1 reads 9 plus 5, card 2 reads 8 plus 7, card 3 reads 16 minus 9, card 4 reads 6 plus 6, and card 5 reads 13 minus 5.
  2. Put students in pairs and give each pair a clipboard with the handout, a double ten frame, and twenty counters in a small cup.
  3. Assign each pair a starting hydrant so the pairs spread out, and explain that pairs move in number order and wrap around from card 5 back to card 1.
  4. Explain the rule at each hydrant. Both partners build the fact on the ten frame, both say the answer, and only then does one partner write it on the handout.
  5. Model one round at the front of the room with a fact that is not on any card, such as 9 plus 3, filling the first frame to ten and putting the leftovers in the second frame.
  6. Start the hunt. Circulate and ask pairs which two numbers they pushed together to make the ten, rather than only checking the written answer.
  7. Stop the hunt when every pair has visited all five hydrants, or at the twenty-minute mark, whichever comes first.
  8. Close with a two-question debrief on the rug. Ask which hydrant fact was easiest to make a ten with, and ask why filling the first frame to exactly ten helps. Have students finish question 6 on the handout before the clipboards are collected.
Pipers Green's Hydrant Hunt: A Grade 1 Make-Ten Station Game — Grade 1 Math
Name: ____________________________ Date: ______________

Student Handout

Write the answer for each hydrant. Build it on the ten frame first.

  1. Hydrant 1: The crew checks 9 hydrants on Oak Street and 5 hydrants on Pine Street. How many hydrants in all?
  2. Hydrant 2: The crew checks 8 hydrants in the morning and 7 hydrants after lunch. How many hydrants in all?
  3. Hydrant 3: A street has 16 hydrants. The crew has checked 9 of them. How many are left to check?
  4. Hydrant 4: The crew checks 6 hydrants on one block and 6 hydrants on the next block. How many hydrants in all?
  5. Hydrant 5: A street has 13 hydrants. The crew has checked 5 of them. How many are left to check?
  6. At Hydrant 1 Rosa moved 1 from the 5 to the 9 to make a ten. She then added 10 and one more number. What was that other number?

From Water for Schools (waterforschools.org). This material is in the public domain (CC0) and may be copied, edited, and shared freely.

Answer Key
  1. Answer: 14 hydrants. Move 1 from the 5 to the 9 to make 10, then add the 4 that is left.
  2. Answer: 15 hydrants. Move 2 from the 7 to the 8 to make 10, then add the 5 that is left.
  3. Answer: 7 hydrants. 16 minus 9 is 7, because 9 plus 7 is 16.
  4. Answer: 12 hydrants. This is a doubles fact, so 6 plus 6 is 12.
  5. Answer: 8 hydrants. 13 minus 5 is 8, because 5 plus 8 is 13.
  6. Answer: 4. Taking 1 from the 5 leaves 4, so Rosa added 10 and 4.

Differentiation

Support

Send these students to three hydrants only, visiting card 1, then card 4, then card 3, so the two easiest facts come before the subtraction. Give them a ten frame with the first row already filled so the make-ten step starts halfway done, and walk the first station with them while narrating the counter moves.

Extension

Ask these pairs to write a sixth hydrant card of their own with a fact within 20 that makes a ten in one move, tape it up, and challenge another pair to solve it before the hunt ends.

ELL supports

Print each hydrant card with the numerals large and the words kept to a minimum, and post a picture of a ten frame filled to ten beside the first station. Rehearse the phrases "make a ten" and "how many are left" with the whole class before the pairs split up.

Extensions

Repeat the hunt a week later with subtraction facts only, keeping the same five hydrant locations, and compare how much faster the class finishes the route the second time.