Question 1 is designed to give students practice with addition facts. Most students are likely to record the various amounts shown and then calculate the sum. Some students, though, may choose to use multiplication facts. It would be worthwhile looking at students’ recordings and noting those who have used multiplication as a more efficient method.
Question 2 gives students an opportunity to be creative and could take the sum to greater than 100. Given the monetary value of the blocks, you may wish to encourage students to make connections between cents and dollars.
As an extension exercise, the students could be challenged to make a monster that costs exactly $1 or $1.25.
The pattern blocks are designed to fit together to create mosaic patterns. As another extension, students could create mosaics with the pattern blocks and calculate the value of their pattern. Encourage students to use multiplication facts as a more efficient way of finding the sum. (This connects to the geometry strand.)
For example:

Game
This game encourages students to learn addition facts for sums of 12, 13, and 14. The pairs of blocks could be sorted into those that make a sum of 12 (5 + 7, 6 + 6, 7 + 5), a sum of 13, or a sum of 14.
Discuss the strategy for finding the sum of two numbers when these two numbers are part of a sequence that has the middle number missing. For example, in 5 + 7, the missing number in the sequence is 6, which is one more than 5 and one less than 7. Double 6 is 12, so 5 + 7 = 12.

 Answers to Activity 

1. Monster a: 94 cents
Monster b: 89 cents
2. Answers will vary.
Game
A game of addition