4th grade addition & subtraction word problems worksheets

Word problems for grade 4 move into the thousands (4.NBT.B.4). The stories still take one step. The work is keeping a long column addition or subtraction honest: lining up place value, carrying and borrowing through several columns, and judging whether the answer is even the right size.

Free printable PDF worksheet, aligned to Common Core 4.NBT.B.4.

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The kind of problems you'll get

Read each problem. Show your work and write the answer.

  1. A train station recorded 300 riders on Monday and 500 more on Friday. How many riders did the station record on Friday?

    Answer: 800

  2. During one weekend, an airport welcomed 4023 travelers on Saturday and 1726 on Sunday. How many travelers passed through the airport?

    Answer: 5749

  3. Marcus ordered 5391 bricks for a construction project and used 2836 on the first wall. How many bricks remained?

    Answer: 2555

Every print pulls a fresh set of problems at this level, so a make-up test or a second sibling never gets the same sheet.

What's on each sheet

Every version prints on US Letter or A4, with its answer key after the problems.

How to teach this

At this grade the operation choice is usually easy and the regrouping is the game. Insist on lined-up columns in the work space, one digit per imaginary cell, because most thousand-range errors are place value slips, not fact slips. After solving, have your child confirm a subtraction with addition and compare the result against a front-end estimate to catch any dropped carry.

Watch for: Kids hunt for a keyword instead of reading, so 'more' means add even when the story compares. Have your child retell the problem in their own words, then say the operation and why, before touching the numbers. In part unknown problems, kids add the whole and the part. If the jar holds 24 and 9 are red, the parts have to fit inside 24. Sketch a bar with the whole on top and the known part underneath. Subtracting across zeros falls apart, so 400 - 137 sprouts strange digits. Have them check with addition: the answer plus 137 has to rebuild 400.

Common questions about addition & subtraction word problems

How is grade 4 different from grade 3 here?
Bigger numbers, longer columns. Problems reach into the thousands (4.NBT.B.4), so the challenge shifts from picking the operation to keeping multi-digit regrouping clean across several place-value columns.
Are these two-step problems?
No, each story takes one operation. The multi-digit arithmetic is the workout at this grade, and there is room under each story to set up the full column calculation.

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Aligned to Common Core 4.NBT.B.4. Reviewed by the One more sheet team. Content version 240, updated September 2026.

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