Addition Word Problems: Counting Collections
Solve problems about combining collections and groups.
🎯 What You'll Learn
You will solve word problems about combining groups of objects, like counting collections or gathering items.
🏪 Market Story
Bola collects colourful bottle caps. She has 37 blue caps, 28 red caps, and 15 green caps. She wants to know how many bottle caps she has in total. Let's help her add them up!
📝 Let's Learn
When you combine collections, you add all the groups together.
Bola's bottle caps: 37 + 28 + 15
Step 1: 37 + 28. Ones: 7 + 8 = 15, write 5 carry 1. Tens: 3 + 2 + 1 = 6. Total: 65.
Step 2: 65 + 15. Ones: 5 + 5 = 10, write 0 carry 1. Tens: 6 + 1 + 1 = 8. Total: 80.
Bola has 80 bottle caps altogether!
Example 1: A school has 45 boys and 52 girls. How many students in total? 45 + 52 = 97 students.
Example 2: Emeka picks 18 mangoes from one tree and 24 from another. Total: 18 + 24 = 42 mangoes.
✏️ Practice Questions
- Chidi has 33 marbles and Tunde has 29 marbles. How many marbles do they have together?
- A market has 120 bags of rice from one supplier and 85 from another. How many bags total?
- Funke reads 14 pages on Monday, 22 on Tuesday, and 18 on Wednesday. How many pages has she read?
Click to see answers
- 33 + 29 = 62 marbles.
- 120 + 85 = 205 bags.
- 14 + 22 + 18 = 54 pages. (14 + 22 = 36, then 36 + 18 = 54.)
💡 Remember
Whenever you need to find "how many altogether" or "how many in total," that's a clue to add. Combine all the groups to get your answer!