I think the best days of summer are spent enjoying a delicious ice cream treat! I’m thrilled to share with you today another math mat in our free printable math mat series! Bring some of that summertime goodness into your classroom and sweeten up your math lessons with these free Ice Cream Math Mats for both addition and subtraction!

Ice Cream Math Mats

Bring on the ice cream toppings!

As an educator, we look for opportunities to liven things up in our classroom, especially when we are feeling the lull of sameness.

For this Ice Cream Math Mats activity, you can make it super fun by choosing sprinkles, candies or mini marshmallows as manipulatives for building addition and subtraction equations. My kids were thrilled when I decided to grab a handful of marshmallows from a cereal box for this activity. I also let them eat the marshmallows when we were all done!

This activity is suitable for small groups or centers, and for use in your home school or traditional classroom environment. Let’s get started!

Gather Your Materials

• Print and laminate the Ice Cream Math Mat Printables (at the end of the post)
• Dice
• Dry Erase Marker and Eraser
• Sprinkles, candies, marshmallows, or any other manipulative for counting

For this activity, I like to laminate my math mats for use year after year. It also makes this activity more effective when the children can use dry erase markers to write in the math equations.

If you don’t have access to a laminator, then you might try slipping the printables inside of a sheet protector or dry erase pocket. I’ve used them this way as well!

Addition

Students will start by rolling one die twice, or two dice to get the 2 parts for their addition equation.

They will then write the 2 numbers in the equation at the bottom of their addition math mat by writing one number in the first box and the other number rolled in the second box.

Students will then use their yummy ice cream toppings to build their addition equation by placing the correct amount of toppings in the first half of the ice cream cone, and again in the second half of their ice cream cone.

Tip: children can check their work by counting the dots on the dice and counting the number of toppings in the ice cream dessert.

Lastly, children will solve their addition problem by adding up the 2 parts of the ice cream cone. Using a dry erase marker, students will write that number in the 3rd box of the addition equation.

Subtraction

Students will start by rolling one die to find their starting point.

Students then will place that many number of ice cream toppings in the center of the ice cream treat.

This ice cream cone doesn’t have 2 parts because we are showing how we are “taking away” a part of this number equation.

They will also write the number rolled on the die in the first box of the equation.

Students will then roll a second die (or one die, twice) to find the second part of the equation.

The smallest number rolled is how many ice cream toppings that will be subtracted from the center of the ice cream cone. Children will write this number in the 2nd box of the math equation.

Once the ice cream cone toppings have been removed from the center of the ice cream dessert, students will write how many are left in the 3rd box of the equation to get their answer!

Grab Your Copy

Ready to work on addition and subtraction? Grab your copy of the ice cream addition and subtraction math mats by clicking the yellow button below.

Then, for even more ice cream math fun, hop over and try our ice cream base 10 puzzles! 

Ice Cream Base 10 Puzzles

More Math Fun

Ice Cream Ten Frame Number Match

Ice Cream Counting Mats