Addition and Subtraction Word Problems: Valentine's Day Party Theme
Copy and paste the story problems below into a word processing program. Before printing, you can personalize the problems. Delete those that don't appeal to you. Change boys to girls. Insert the names of your own children and their friends. Change the font and font size. Answers are below.
Amy and her friends in the Homeschooled Kids Club have decided to have a Valentine's Day party. They've decided to do all the work themselves and only use adults when they have to. To their surprise, planning this party required a lot of math! Some of the numbers get big. You might want to draw pictures as you go along to help you.
1. Amy was in charge of the guest list. She invited seven girls and eight boys. How many children are invited to the party?
2. Each of the children who are invited are allowed to bring their parents and their brothers and sisters. Nine of the children who are invited will be bringing one parent. The other children will bring two parents. How many parents will be coming to the party?
(To simplify this problem:
Nine of the children will bring one parent. Six children will bring two parents. How many parents are coming to the party?)
3. The children who are invited have many brothers and sisters. 10 brothers are coming to the party. 7 sisters are coming to the party. How many brothers and sisters are coming to the party?
4. A really hard question! How many people are coming to the party? If this is too hard, you can draw. Have you been drawing pictures as you worked? If you have, count all the people you drew. If you haven't, stop and draw a picture that shows all the people coming. Make them dressed just right for a Valentine's Day party.
5. Claire is making special valentines for her best friends. She made three red valentines and 4 blue valentines. How many valentines did she make?
6. Jacob made 5 valentines with cars on them and 8 valentines with horses. How many valentines did he make?
7. Anthony and Marcos made some of the cookies. They made 9 heart shaped cookies. They also made 4 penguin cookies for no good reason. How many cookies did they make?
8. At the party, the children did handstand races. Kristen took 8 steps before she fell. Alex took 8 steps before he fell. How many steps did they take altogether?
9. No one knew Suzi was coming to the party, so they didn't bring her any valentines. All the children decided to give her at least one valentine. To figure out this problem, you first have to figure out how many children were at the party. Add the answer to question number 1 and the answer to question number 3. Now you know how many children are at the party, not counting Suzi. Go to number 10.
10. If half the children at the party gave Suzi one of their valentines, and the other half gave her two valentines, how many valentines did she get? Need help solving this one? Here's what to do:
a. Figure out what half of the answer to question 9 is. If you don't know how to divide, draw the number of children who were at the party. Now cross out every other person. (You can also line up dolls or toys to be the children.) That means you should leave one, but cross out the next one. Leave the next one. Cross out the one after that. Keep going until you run out of children.
b. Count how many children are crossed out and write down that number. Each of those children gave Suzi one valentine.
c. Count how many children are left. Do you know how to count by two? If you do, count the kids left, but count by twos. If you don't, say two numbers for each child left in your picture. That will tell you how many valentines were given by the children who gave two. Write down that number.
d. Add the answers you got in B and C. Now you know how many valentines Suzi got from all the nice homeschoolers in her group!
Answers:
1. 15
2. 21
3. 17
4. 53
5. 7
6. 13
7. 13
8. 16
9. 32
10. 48