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Math problem set Kindergarten Math

Water Jugs for Pebble Hollow Camp: A Kindergarten Problem Set

Eight kindergarten word problems within ten about a truck delivering drinking-water jugs to a camp with no pipe from town, with fully worked counting solutions.

Objectives

  1. Students will add within ten to find how many jugs a camp has in all.
  2. Students will subtract within ten to find how many jugs are left after a delivery is used.
  3. Students will find how many more jugs are needed to reach a target amount.

Vocabulary

Key words: jug, truck, cabin, left

Teacher overview

Pebble Hollow Camp is a made-up summer camp in the hills with no water main running out to it, so a truck drives up twice a week with sealed jugs of drinking water and leaves them by the cabins. Every problem in this set follows those jugs through one week at the camp, which gives kindergartners a single story to hold in mind instead of eight unrelated ones. The misconception this set is built to correct shows up in problem 7: when a question asks how many more jugs the camp needs, many kindergartners answer with the largest number in the story, because the word "more" pulls them toward the bigger amount rather than the gap between the two amounts. The worked solutions therefore match the two groups item by item rather than jumping to a number sentence.

Read each problem aloud. Students should have ten counters or a drawing space available for every problem.

Water Jugs for Pebble Hollow Camp: A Kindergarten Problem Set — Kindergarten Math
Name: ____________________________ Date: ______________

Problems

  1. The truck brings 5 jugs on Monday. It brings 3 more jugs on Tuesday. How many jugs in all?
  2. The camp has 8 jugs. Cabin One takes 2 jugs. How many jugs are left?
  3. Cabin One has 2 jugs. Cabin Two has 4 jugs. How many jugs do the two cabins have in all?
  4. The camp had 6 jugs. The camp used all 6 jugs. How many jugs are left?
  5. The truck brings 9 jugs. The cook takes 3 jugs. How many jugs are left?
  6. There are 4 jugs by the door. There are 4 jugs by the tent. How many jugs in all?
  7. The camp needs 10 jugs. The camp has 7 jugs. How many more jugs does the camp need?
  8. The truck starts with 10 jugs. It drops off 5 jugs at the camp. How many jugs are still on the truck?

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: 8 jugs. Put out 5 counters for Monday. Add 3 more counters for Tuesday. Count the whole group: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. Starting at 5 and counting on gives the same answer: 6, 7, 8.
  2. Answer: 6 jugs. Put out 8 counters. Slide 2 of them away for Cabin One. Count what stays: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6.
  3. Answer: 6 jugs. Put 2 counters in one pile and 4 counters in another pile. Push the piles together and count them all: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6.
  4. Answer: 0 jugs. Put out 6 counters and slide all 6 away. Nothing is left, and the number for nothing left is zero.
  5. Answer: 6 jugs. Put out 9 counters. Slide 3 away for the cook. Count the rest: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6.
  6. Answer: 8 jugs. Count the 4 by the door, then keep counting into the tent group: 5, 6, 7, 8.
  7. Answer: 3 jugs. Build a row of 10 counters for what the camp needs and a row of 7 counters for what the camp has, one row above the other. Match them one to one. Count the counters in the top row with no partner: 1, 2, 3. The answer is the gap between the rows, not the 10.
  8. Answer: 5 jugs. Put out 10 counters for the full truck. Slide 5 away for the drop-off. Count what is still on the truck: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.

Differentiation

Support

Give these students a ten-frame so each jug sits in its own square, and read each problem twice while the student places counters on the second reading. For problem 7, hand them two ten-frames stacked one above the other so the matching rows line up without any adjusting.

Extension

Ask confident students to write the number sentence for problems 5 and 7 and to explain why one uses a minus sign and the other can be solved by counting up. Then have them write a ninth problem about the camp for a partner, using numbers within ten.

ELL supports

Pre-teach jug, truck, cabin, and left with a real jug, a toy truck, and a photograph of a cabin. Offer the sentence frames "There are ___ jugs in all" and "___ jugs are left," and accept the correct number of fingers or counters pushed forward in place of a spoken sentence.

Extensions

Set a stack of ten empty labeled jugs or milk cartons in the classroom and let two students act out each problem for the class, carrying jugs from the truck to the cabin table as the problem is read. Keep the props at a math station for the rest of the week so students can build their own delivery stories.