What is subtraction?

Subtraction is something that you can use in every day life.

If you don’t even know what subtraction is, you may be wondering ,”What do you mean by subtraction?”. Well let’s start learning.

When you do subtraction, you “take away”. So if I say you have 6 pencils, and you give me 2 of your pencils. How many pencils do you have now? The way you find the answer is you take away 2 from 6. If you count how many pencils you have left, you’ll end up with 4 pencils.

In this subtraction sentence, you will see a 6 and a 2. These numbers are called are called minuends. There can be more than 2 minuends. Do you see some kind of dash between 6 and 2? This is called the minus sign. At the end you’ll see a symbol with 2 horizontal lines. It’s called the equal sign. You put it at the end of an equation. Last but not least, there is the difference, which is the answer to a subtraction problem.

Now, let’s get to some basic problems!

SUBTRACTION PROBLEMS

Katie has 8 marbles. She gave 3 marbles to her little sister. How many marbles does Katie have now?

ANSWER

Katie has 5 marbles left.

Jacob has 4 cupcakes. He dropped 2 of them. how many cupcakes does Jacob have left?

ANSWER

Jacob has 2 cupcakes left.

CONGRATULATIONS! Now you can officially subtract numbers!