We are starting Chapter 7 this week in math. In chapter 5, your student began to learn about subtraction concepts by taking apart a number. For example, your student might take apart 6 into 4 and 2. In this chapter, your student will use a subtraction sentence, which includes a minus sign, to show this relationship. Your student will subtract numbers within 10 to take away from a group of objects or animals and find how many are left. Your student will also subtract to take apart a whole and find the part that remains. Your student will discover subtraction patterns: When subtracting 0 from a number, the answer is the number. When subtracting 1 from a number, the answer is the counting number before the number. Finally, when subtracting a number from itself, the answer is 0. Your student will learn about the relationship between addition and subtraction by studying related facts, such as 2 + 3 = 5 and 5 − 3 = 2. This will help your student determine whether addition or subtraction best represents a situation. The vocabulary words for the chapter are left, minus sign, separate, subtract, subtraction sentence, and take away. Use the activities below to practice and apply subtraction with your student. 

• Look for opportunities to talk about subtraction with your student. For example, perhaps you bought six bananas and now there are two. How many bananas did your family eat? There were ten people in line in front of you. Now there are four people in front of you. How many people left? 
• Take turns subtracting 1. One person names a number up to ten, the other person says the number that is one less. 
• Help your student practice writing subtraction sentences. Toss five coins on a table. Ask your student to write a sentence that uses the whole (all pennies) minus one part (heads) to find the other part (tails). 
• Scatter up to ten pennies on a table. Have your student count the pennies and write the number.

Ask your student to look away while you cover some of the pennies with your hand or a sheet of paper. Challenge your student to name the number of hidden pennies using the number for the whole and the number of pennies that are showing.