Bat Mystery Picture: Adding & subtracting to 30

A little bat with pointy ears, yellow eyes and wide purple wings. The spread wings fill the grid from side to side, so children can watch the shape grow outward as they solve.

Children add and subtract with numbers up to 30 and cross ten along the way: 17 + 6, 26 − 8, 19 + 5, 30 − 12. Since every answer has to match a row on the grid, results never go past the height of the picture, and the bigger numbers appear mostly as the starting number in a subtraction, such as 27 − 9 or 24 − 7. That makes this topic particularly strong on subtracting across a ten from the twenties, which many children find harder than adding.