Class 1 maths worksheets: the order that gets to adding without counting

Class 1 is the year counting turns into arithmetic, and class 1 maths worksheets should be built around that. A child arrives able to say the numbers in order and leaves able to add and take away within ten without counting on fingers every time. Most maths work sheets sold for class 1 ignore that gap entirely — they print sums on a page and assume the child already sees ten as two fives.

These are the fifteen books on this site that suit a class 1 child, in the order they should be printed. Everything here is a free A4 PDF. The child is six, give or take six months; in the school year before this they were in UKG, and the year before that LKG.

Before the sums: the two books that make arithmetic possible

Ten frames come before addition. A ten frame is two rows of five squares. Fill seven and a child stops counting one, two, three and starts seeing a full row and two more. That is subitising, and it is the difference between a child who adds and a child who recounts from one every single time. Ten frames 1-20 is thirteen pages, half reading filled frames and half filling empty ones.

Then number bonds. Number bonds to 10 is sixty part-part-whole diagrams where the empty circle moves around, so the same pair is met as 7 and 3, as 3 and 7, and as “ten take away three”. A child who knows the pairs that make ten does not need to count to add.

The arithmetic itself

Addition within 10 — eighty sums, every one with the objects drawn next to it. The pictures are not decoration; they are what lets a child check an answer without asking an adult.

Subtraction within 10 — eighty sums with the taken-away objects crossed out rather than removed, so subtraction stays visible as an action rather than becoming a rule about symbols.

Print these two together. Addition and subtraction taught weeks apart produce a child who thinks they are unrelated operations.

Numbers past ten

Missing numbers 1-100 gets emptier as it goes — six gaps on the first chart, most of the grid by the last. This is the book that turns a memorised count into an understood sequence.

Skip counting by 2, 5 and 10 is the groundwork for multiplication two years early, and it costs nothing to lay now.

Number tracing 1-20 and Counting 1-20 are UKG books. Keep them for a class 1 child whose numerals are still reversed — a 6 written as a backwards 6 is a formation problem, not a maths problem, and drilling sums will not fix it.

Two digit numbers: the second half of the year

Tens and ones worksheets come first. Tens drawn as rods of ten squares, then numbers split into tens and ones, then expanded form (47 = 40 + 7). A child who writes 98 for “9 ones and 8 tens” is reading digits rather than thinking about place value, and every sum after this depends on that.

2 digit addition worksheets and 2 digit subtraction worksheets are 144 column sums each. Sheets 1-6 have no carrying or borrowing, which is class 1 work. Sheets 7-12 carry and borrow, which most schools leave for class 2, so stop at sheet 6 if the school has not reached it.

Addition and subtraction word problems turn the same arithmetic into short stories. Sheets 1-8 stay within 20 and belong in class 1. Watch for “how many more”: it sounds like adding and is subtraction.

The rest of the class 1 year

2D and 3D shapes — six flat shapes with their sides and corners, six solids with faces, edges and vertices.

Telling the time — o’clock and half past, which is as far as class 1 goes. Quarter past can wait.

Tally marks and bar charts — count the shapes, record them as tallies, colour the bar. This is data handling, and it is the topic most often skipped at home because it does not look like maths.

More, less or equal is written for a younger child and is here as revision only. If > and < are already secure, skip it.

What is not here

Two class 1 topics have no book on this site yet: money and measurement — length, weight and capacity. If your child’s school is on those chapters, these worksheets will not cover them and it is better to know that now than after printing. Multiplication and division are not here either, but those are not class 1 topics; skip counting above is the honest preparation for them.

How to use these

Ten minutes twice a week beats an hour on Sunday. Arithmetic fluency is built by frequency, the same way handwriting is. Print at 100% scale, not Fit to page — here is why that matters.

If your child is younger than this, the LKG list is the one to start from, and the full teaching order covers every book on the site from pre-writing strokes upward. Every maths book here also sits on the maths shelf.