Recommended Age: 5 years and onwards (can be younger depending on the child’s skills and experiences)
Purpose: To practice subtraction that will lead to memorization of the essential subtraction combinations
Level of Parent Involvement: Medium, the adult must present this exercise to the child, once the child has been shown they may work independently
Prerequisites
- The child must be able to count accurately from 1-10 and onwards
- The child must be able to write numbers
- The child must be able to match the numeral symbol with its quantity of numbers 1-10 and beyond
- The child must have had many experiences doing subtraction with the golden beads
Materials
- The subtraction strip board
- Blue strips 1 to 9
- Red strips with partitions 1 to 9
- 17 unmarked wooden strips
- Prepared subtraction tables
- Pencil
- Subtraction chart 1
Note; if doing this exercise with your child from home you will be using the paper version of the above materials (see resource pack)
Preparation
- None
Steps
- Invite the child, introduce the subtraction strip board, the child may bring the materials to the table
- Notice with the child the different coloured numbers on the top of the board
- Lay out the blue strips from longest to shortest on the left side of the board
- Introduce the child to the unmarked wooden strips, begin placing them in order from longest to shortest to the right of the blue strips
- Do a few then the child may finish laying them out
- Invite the child to choose their favourite number for example 12
- Then, using one of the unmarked wooden strips, blank out the numbers from 13-18 informing the child they don’t need to remember the red numbers
- You may show the child to count the strips from longest to shortest 1,2,3…12 and take that strip and place it on the board to cover the numbers you don’t need
- Then ask the child “how many do you want to take away from 12?” indicating towards the blue strips
- Child responds 9 for example, place the blue strip of nine to the left of the unmarked wooden strip informing the child the answer is at the end of the blue strip (for example 3, refer to the image below)
- Repeat a few more times, then invite the child to practice
- Let the child know if the answer is red we don’t need to write it down or remember it (do at least one example of this)
- When the child has had sufficient practice, introduce them to the prepared subtraction tables
- Invite the child to choose another number and use the blue strips to find the answers
- At the end introduce control chart 1 to check
Variations
- None
