Pumpkin Seed Place Value – Subtraction Math Facts

To support and extend the learning that my eldest does in school we’re doing lots of different after-school activities with him, a couple of weeks ago we worked on place value with leaves, seeing how the number could be read, written as a numeral and then as words. He’s mastered the writing and the reading of these numbers and we’ve extended it to work on 100’s, 1000’s, 10000’s, 100000’s and this morning a discussion about millions and the number of places that has. Using that knowledge of place value I’m working on some simple subtraction using maths manipulative’s that we’ve made to work on embedding some basic number facts.

Learning Objectives

• Recognise the place value of each digit in a 2-digit number.
• Use place value and number facts to solve problems.

Materials needed

9 x Craft sticks

Pumpkin Seeds

Double Sided Sticky Tape or Glue

Large sheet of white paper

Black Marker

Pencil

Eraser

Making the Pumpkin Seed Place Value

Onto a craft stick place a strip of double sided sticky tape and remove the backing.

To the tape add 10 pumpkin seeds – we have used dried ones from the store cupboard as the pumpkins aren’t in season in the UK shops yet and our garden ones this year failed due to not enough water.

Make 9 of these to represent 10 – 90

Sort out 9 separate pumpkin seeds to use as well.

On a large piece of paper draw some large squares in the number sentence

Whilst you are growing the seeds why not read a book about seeds with your toddlers and preschoolers.

Working on basic subtraction using Pumpkin Seed Place Value

One of the keys to being good at maths is to know some simple number rules that work. These are easy to embed early on and one of the subtraction rules that I remember from being a kid is working with place value. I used to clap my hands in my head when ever I saw a problem that had a lower unit on the second part of the subtraction than the first as I just knew I could do it easily.

Start off with a simple number sentence – we did 24 – 12 =

Putting the 24 out first we used the two sticks and then 4 pumpkin seeds.

We then moved 12 across – 1 stick and 2 pumpkin seeds to be under the second box in the number sentence

Then switched over our manipulative’s from under the 24 to the answer square.

I then used a large number and we repeated. My eldest quickly picked up the fact that he could do it in his head using his number bond rules – which is as normal jumping a few lessons ahead. But using the manipulative’s is a great way to start embedding some of those number rules that will help with mental mathematics as well as problem solving in the future.

Pumpkin Based Activities for Early Elementary Students

Pumpkin Patch Arrays to Learn Multiplication by School Time Snippets

Free Pumpkin Shape Matching Game by Life Over C’s

Second Grade Noun and Predicate Pumpkin Activity by Sugar Aunts

How to Carve a Pumpkin Writing Prompts by Still Playing School

How to Set Up a Pumpkin Engineering Task Your Second Graders Will Love by Thriving STEM

Pumpkin Seed Place Value – Subtraction Math Fact by Rainy Day Mum

Shapes on a Pumpkin by Preschool Powol Packets

Pumpkin Math Fact Pick and Solve Sticks by Creative Family Fun