On Thursday last week, you used spacemen in a flying saucer to work on subtraction (taking away) We are going to extend that today.
Watch this video first explaining subtraction.
Today you are going to need to have a 0-10 number line (or your number cards ordered 0-10), a box or pot of some sort filled with 10 small animals/toys, paper and pens or pencils.
Tell your child that today they are a train. The pot they are holding is the carriage full of passengers.
Choose a route for the train to travel (for example, start at the sofa, travel to the door and back again to the sofa) The starting point is the station.
At the start of the journey, the train has 10 passengers. Show them 10 on the number line. Ask the train to go on its journey. Your child moves around the agreed route pretending they are a train! When it returns to the station, one passenger gets off the train. Take one passenger out of the pot (carriage).
Verbally say 10-1 = 9. Ask your child to count the passengers left to check that there are now 9 passengers. Use the number line to show how you can jump back. Start with your finger on 10 and jump back one space. Say, “10-1 = 9”.
Repeat the activity, with your child pretending to be the train, travelling around the room and removing a passenger each time they come into the station. Keep demonstrating this with the number line and verbally reinforcing it (9-1 = 8, 8 – 1 = 7, 7 – 1 = 6 and so on)
When all the passengers have got off the train (your pot is empty) this activity is finished.
Now, ask your child to sit down and count a specific number of passengers back into the pot (for example put back in 6 passengers) ask them to write a 6 on their piece of paper. Then ask them to take away one passenger. Ask them to show you what they have done on the number line (start with their finger on 6 then jump back one to land on 5) ask them to complete writing out the calculation. 6 – 1 = 5
Repeat this a few times. Each time, start with a different number of passengers in the pot, take one away, show this on the number line and then write out the calculation.
Cheeky Challenge!!! Here are some train subtraction sheets to complete. There is a PDF for those able to print and picture for you if you dont have a printer.
