Teaching and understanding subtraction

Subtraction can seem like a very easy concept to understand from an adults point of view simply because we have been doing subtraction for a long time. (Some of us longer than others!) I have found that the main problem children have with subtraction is knowing that what is left is the answer, not what you take away.

For example:  10 - 6 = 4

Give a child 10 counters then ask them to take 6 away. They will pick up 6 counters and keep them in their hand. Ask them how many are left. Often the answer will be the number of counters that they have in their hand, not the number of counters left on the table.

Here is an easy subtraction game to help children understand the concept of subtraction

You will need:
Empty container - an empty ice cream tub is perfect or anything similar.
10 - 20 Counters - you could use buttons, tiddlywinks, or anything that can be thrown into the container

The idea of the game is to throw all the counters at once into the container and try and get as many in the container as possible. It’s quite difficult! All the counters that didn’t make it are taken away - make a big fuss of the take away and say that they are taken away because they didn’t make it into the container. Now count how many counters made it into the container.

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To add some excitement to the game the container could be an alien space ship and the counters could be aliens. You could then have a question like this: 10 aliens are trying to get on the space ship to go home, how many will make it and how many will you have to take away? You can then write the sum down so they can relate the maths to the space ship and the aliens.

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