Bees and Hives Sorting Activity (Addition and Subtraction within 10)

A fun sorting activity to practise basic addition and subtraction. With its bee theme, this activity is perfect for spring or summer.
During the kindergarten year, children begin to explore the concepts of addition and subtraction.
At this age children start by being introduced to the idea of addition as ‘putting numbers together’ and subtraction as ‘taking away’. They’ll start by using objects or math manipulatives to explore these concepts before moving on to explore simple addition and subtraction number sentences.
As with any new math concept, lots of practice is required to help these new ideas and skills stick. Because of this, you need lots of addition and subtraction activities on hand for your child to work through (and lots of different types of activity too, to keep things interesting and fun).
This bee-themed math activity will help with just that. Instead of just writing their answers, this activity will have children sorting addition and subtraction facts (and matching bees to their hives).
Want to learn a bit more about it? Read on for a sneak peek.
Tell me about this bees and hives sorting activity
This bee-themed hands-on activity is a fun way to practise addition and subtraction within 10.
This activity is designed for kindergarten aged children or indeed any child that is practising or revising basic addition and subtraction within 10.
It’s a sorting activity and requires no writing (your child will love you for that) so your child can really just focus on the math.
Once printed and prepped, you can use this activity over and over, practising different addition and subtraction facts each time.
Want to use it with a class of children in the classroom? This activity makes a great math station. Plus, it’s easy to differentiate the activity for different abilities by using more/fewer hives and selecting harder/easier facts.
What’s included in this resource?
This is a digital PDF download which contains:
- bee hives for numbers 0 to 10 (half page, colour)
- bee hives for numbers 0 to 10 (quarter page, black and white)
- 132 bee cards (12 bee cards for each hive)
Prep
First you’ll want to print and cut out the bees and hives cards.
There are two set of hives included – one colour and one black and white set. You only need to print out one set of hives.
If you can, print onto card stock. Alternatively, you could print onto paper and then laminate the cards to help them last a bit longer.
How to complete this activity
This activity involves helping the bees to find their hive.
On each bee card there is an addition or subtraction question. Children need to solve the question and then match the bee card to the hive that shows the correct answer.
So, for example, if the bee card says 4 + 6, that bee belongs in the hive with the number 10.
There are 11 hives included (in both colour, and black and white) for the numbers 0 to 10. For each hive there are 12 corresponding bee cards.
Each time you do this activity, choose two, three or four hives and their corresponding bee cards to focus on. I wouldn’t recommend using all of the hives at the same time – that would just involve too many bees (a little overwhelming!).
Mix up all the bee cards and spread them out over the table. Then challenge your child to sort the bee cards into their correct hives.
If your child has lots of energy and wants to be on the go, add some movement to this activity by hiding the bee cards around the room/your home/backyard. Have your child hunt for the bee cards before bring them back to the hives for sorting.
Where can I purchase my own copy of this resource?
This Bees and Hives sorting activity is available now in the Math, Kids and Chaos online store (for those shopping from the US, Canada, Australia or New Zealand), as well as in my Teachers Pay Teachers store.