The DUCK SHOOT game to practice
'Total number of items' for 2nd grade

Word problems: adding items and item costs

Learn how to add items and how to add the cost of multiple items with the sub-category "Word problems"

3 topics:
Total number of items
Total cost of 2 items
Total cost of 3 items

Sometimes in math the sums are not given to you as numbers in columns, but as words and sentences. This doesn't mean that the math you have to do is different, but it does mean you have to work out first what the sum you are being asked to do is, and then work on the sum itself. In this set of topics, the questions are to do with adding up either the total number of items or the total cost of a set number of items.

When we want to understand math problems in sentences, we need to read carefully through the sentence and create a sum that takes the number information out of the sentence and puts it in a sum. For instance, in the sentence "Jack has 6 apples and Jill has 12 apples." we can see that the things we are interested in are the apples, and the numbers we need to sum are 6 and 12. So, to get the total number of APPLES, we add up the 6 (that Jack has) and the 12 (the number of apples that Jill has). Written as a sum this will be

6 + 12 = 18

So we can say that the number of apples that Jack and Jill have is 18.

When the sentences we are looking at involve money, we have a similar situation, but our addition sum will involve adding amounts of money rather than numbers of items. Sometimes this is easy. Say we have 2 things that cost 12 cents each. To know the total cost, we simply add the 12 twice to get 24 cents. If the 2 items cost different amounts, we can still add up those 2 amounts to get a total cost. For 3 items, the idea is the same.