Basic Word Problems Worksheet

Word problems are where first graders finally put addition and subtraction to work on real situations, and this basic word problems worksheet gives them four short stories to solve. Each problem tells a small, familiar story — pages read in a book, minutes of gym time, seeds planted in a garden, shells found at the beach — and asks one question the child answers by deciding whether to add or to subtract. That decision is the whole skill. First graders can usually compute within 20 long before they can tell which operation a story calls for, so a basic word problems worksheet that keeps the numbers friendly and puts all the difficulty into the thinking is exactly what this stage of the year needs.

This kindergarten word problems worksheet works just as well as an independent morning starter, a math-center task, or a homework page. Read the directions together the first time: solve each problem, then write the answer with its unit, like 5 apples. Naming the unit matters more than it looks — a child who writes “18 pages” instead of a bare “18” has shown you that the number still means something. Every problem has its own picture, so a child who gets stuck on the words has a second way into the story, and every problem has a wide writing line sized for first-grade handwriting.

What’s Included

• 1 print-ready PDF worksheet
• Answer key
• 4 illustrated one-step word problems, adding and subtracting within 20

There are three reasons this page moves first graders forward. First, it makes the child choose the operation instead of handing it to them — two problems add and two subtract, in no predictable order, so the only way through is to picture what is happening in the story. Second, it keeps every number inside 20, which means no child loses a problem to arithmetic they have not met yet; the difficulty sits in the reading and the reasoning, right where a basic word problems worksheet should put it. Third, it asks for the unit as part of the answer, which builds the habit of checking that a result actually makes sense — the single most useful thing a young problem-solver can learn to do.

Teachers and parents can stretch this page a long way. Have children act one problem out with counters or classroom objects before writing anything, or ask them to say the number sentence out loud — “fifteen minus nine equals six” — so the story and the equation connect. Try covering the question and asking what could be asked; children who can invent the question understand the structure. Older siblings or partners can write a fifth problem about their own day for someone else to solve. And a quick sort of the four problems into “this one grows” and “this one shrinks” is a two-minute discussion that pays off on every word problem for the rest of the year.

Related Resources

• Addition and Subtraction Word Problems Worksheet
• Subtraction Word Problems Worksheet
• Addition Single Digit Word Problems Worksheet
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