Math Challenges for Fun is a great resource for helping students develop their addition and subtraction mental math skills. Students add/subtract a whole list of numbers to come up with the answer. They can be encouraged to use various strategies to determine if their answer is correct. Once they have their answer they can partner up to see if others got the same answer. They must defend/explain how they got their answer.

These math challenges make for a fun brain break, or quick filler activity. My students love them. It is interesting to see how students can be convinced that they have the correct answer, even when it is wrong. Defending/proving their answer is new to most students, so this makes it even more of a challenge.

While I use this activity for my first grade class, it could be used for multiple grade levels. I even find it challenging for myself (apparently my mental math is limited).

Here is what is included:

Pages 1-10 – Students add all of the single digit numbers.

Pages 11 – 20 – Students add some single digit numbers and subtract some single digit numbers.

Pages 21 – 23 - Students add all of the double digit numbers.

Pages 24 - 26 – Students add some double digit numbers and subtract some double digit numbers.

Page 27 – Students can make their own math challenge.