Paint Swatch Mental Math

So I succumbed to the paint swatches, although I felt a little guilty taking them for a different purpose than what they are intended for. But, when the government starts paying us what we deserve, I'll have more of a conscience about those things. :p.

Since we are working on mental math in my fourth grade classroom, here's what I did (I'm sure this post is out there a million times over. My apologies if so!):

1) First, I cut the swatches in three parts and rearranged them with different colors.

2) Then, with my beautiful handwriting (dripping sarcasm there), I added simple addition and subtraction problems.

Here they are, ready to go:

After laminating, I'll place them in a math center. Or I could do it in a whole group and have them find each other. That would be a great way to do grouping if I needed groups of three. But you have to have the right number of students or it gets complicated giving a child more than one card.

So, that's my take on paint swatches. What's yours?

Have a great week!

Tabitha