Mystery Bureau › Kindergarten › Subtraction within 10
🎯 Kindergarten · Subtraction within 10 · free, no sign-up
Space rocks drift across the screen, each one carrying a number. Eight take away two — find the rock showing 6 and bump it clear. Because the answers arrive as moving targets rather than a list of blanks, a kindergartner has to actually hold the number in their head for a second before they commit, which is a very different thing from writing in a box. Five take-aways per run, all within 10, and the pool refreshes so it never becomes a memorized sequence.
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Drawn from the same pool the activity uses, so these are the real thing rather than an illustration. The numbers change on every attempt — there is no fixed set to memorize.
| Question | Answer |
|---|---|
| 8 − 3 = ? | 5 |
| 7 − 3 = ? | 4 |
| 9 − 7 = ? | 2 |
| 5 − 4 = ? | 1 |
| 5 − 1 = ? | 4 |
Watch for children who tap the rock showing the first number in the question rather than the answer — a classic sign they're pattern-matching digits instead of subtracting. Saying the whole sentence out loud ("eight take away two leaves six") usually clears it up in a session or two.
Official wording, quoted in full — not our summary of it:
| K.OA.A.2 | Solve addition and subtraction word problems, and add and subtract within 10, e.g., by using objects or drawings to represent the problem. |
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