For the past several weeks, we have been working on learning more about subtraction. We start off with the concept of "breaking apart" - that one large number can be broken into two smaller numbers. Then we begin using the term "take away" so that the students understand that the smaller number is taken away from the larger one, leaving another small number.
To illustrate the idea of "take away," we played a little game I like to call SUBTRACTION SMASH!
We took a small amount of Play-Doh, made five small balls, and "smashed" the number to take it away from five.
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| Here we are, getting ready to SMASH! |
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| We smashed, or took away, two from our five.... |
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| Five SMASH Two leaves me with?! |
Working together, we discovered that there is a pattern when taking away numbers from larger ones. We also used this strategy when we were learning addition to be sure we found ALL of the ways to make a larger number. This time, we used smaller numbers to take away from five to find the pattern (although, Mrs. I didn't quite get the pattern in order today....!).
Ask your student about Subtraction SMASH! I'm sure they'd love to practice subtraction at home if you let them smash some things!
