Ep 38: Quick and Easy Subtraction Games up to 12

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Subtraction games can be a little trickier than addition games because with a lot of addition games,

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you get two or three dice and you're good to go.

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But with subtraction, it can be tricky because we're not wanting to get into negative numbers

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with, you know, K1, 2 students.

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So you have to be a little bit more thoughtful about the games that you have your kids do

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so that they don't end up in negative numbers.

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And in this episode, I'm going to talk to you about five subtraction games that you can use with your students.

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Hello and welcome to Making Number Sense Make Sense, a podcast for elementary teachers,

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specifically early elementary teachers looking to really make an impact in the number sense of their students.

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Sometimes it can be hard to visualize games just through audio.

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So you can go ahead and go to my Instagram and I have reels of all of these games that you can see them in action

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really quickly and get a fun story or two in the meantime.

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The first game is similar to the game that we had last week in the addition episode.

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Instead of spin and add, it is spin and subtract.

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So the main difference here is that you're going to have your students starting with a full 10 frame.

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So these are all subtraction from 10 backs that they're working on and then they would spin their spinner

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and then whatever they spun would be the number that they take off of the 10 frame.

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And then again have the opportunity to write a subtraction equation that goes with what they just did

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so that they could get practice with their number writing, equation writing.

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And it's helpful for you to be able to see what they're doing and how they're doing.

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And if there's any confusion with writing equations and symbols.

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If there is confusion, I want you to tune in next week

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because I'm going to be discussing how I like to introduce the addition and subtraction symbols

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because the reality is they don't need those symbols to be able to do addition and subtraction.

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It can start to be symbol overload with letters and numbers and equal signs and all of that.

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So I have a little trick that I like to use to introduce those things to help kids remember

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what the different symbols mean and have them writing equations in no time.

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Okay, the next game is called spin, roll, and color.

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And so for that game your kids will spin a number.

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They go to 12. I usually have them just roll one die because they might spin a lower number than the dice

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and then they're into negative numbers and we don't want that.

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So if you are going to use two dice, you just want to talk to them about how to determine

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if the number that you rolled is bigger than the number that you spun,

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then you might have to start that roll over again.

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Anyway, for that game you would spin the spinner and then they could build a tower to match it

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if they want that visual and then roll one dice and then subtract the number they rolled

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from the number they spun and then they can color in that number or space.

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Their recording sheet is kind of like a grid.

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So it has all of the numbers on the bottom and then they would just color in one box

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for the difference that they got and then they're looking to see which one can get to the top first

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or whenever they finish their grid.

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The next one is called build, roll, and break and for that one, they're going to build a tower of 12

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then roll two dice.

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They'll have to add together the sum of the two dice and then subtract that from the tower.

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So they're going to break off the tower where the sum is and then write an equation to go with it

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and they have kind of like a game board.

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So they have to fill up the game board to get to the finish line to finish that game, build, roll, and break.

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My students really enjoyed that game because they like to build towers.

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I think it's fun to kind of break it off gently.

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We're not going too crazy here, but those cubes can be pretty tough.

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You know, they've had a lot of a lot of little as like we've had a lot of kids using those cubes.

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So they should be able to survive the breaking of the tower.

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The next one is similar to spin roll and color.

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This one is spin roll and remove.

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So the idea is they same they spin roll and subtract whatever number they rolled and then

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remove it from their tower and that one the focus is more on writing equations

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where the other one is just finding the difference.

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So they're getting practice of both sides there with the idea being similar so that they can do this station independently.

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It will be familiar to them, but come at it from a little bit of a different angle.

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So they're working on different skills.

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And the last one is my favorite.

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It's called jump around jump around is a partner game.

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And so the way that that game works is they will spin and that's their starting number.

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Then after that they would roll their die and then subtract the number that they rolled from the number that they spun.

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The thing that's a little bit trickier about this game is that there's not necessarily built in a place for them to model the subtraction.

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They would have to kind of keep it in their head or use their fingers.

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So it's a little bit more challenging than the other ones, which is kind of why I said it last.

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And the reason that it's called jump around is because on their game board, there's all the different sums that they might have.

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And so what they're doing is looking for the sum that they got jumping around to wherever they find it.

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And then they can color it in with whatever color that they choose.

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So maybe one player is the blue player, one player is the green player.

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And so they would color in all of their spots blue.

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Their partner would color in all of their spots green.

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And then at the end, they're trying to figure out who got the most spots.

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The numbers on the game board, I tried to pick more of the ones that are more common.

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So they're not rolling and spinning and spinning and spinning, trying to get like a one or something like that.

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But like I said, it's a little bit trickier because they kind of have to keep the number that they're using in their head and counting down.

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So they maybe spun a 10 and then rolled a five.

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Well, that's not a good example. That's a double.

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They might have spun a 10 and rolled a three, so they could either count up or count back to figure out what the difference is.

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The idea is they want to keep going to see who can color in the most spots.

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It's a little bit faster paced, a little bit more intense.

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But of course, if they need it, you can definitely offer them a 10 frame to use or cubes to use to support them.

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If they're not quite ready to just do that mentally or with their fingers, they can have a model of it.

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They can use a 10 frame or cubes to represent what's going on.

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Some of these games have the print and go version where you could just print it, color it.

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Others that have a print and go version and a color version.

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So you could laminate that one and then just reuse it again and again.

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There are options here.

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I hope that gave you some ideas.

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Stay tuned next week for when I talk all about how I introduce the symbols and what they mean so that they really stick and minimize confusion between addition and subtraction symbols in equations.

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And until then, I will catch you next time.