Count Down to Christmas Break!

To introduce subtraction, we made countdown chains.  We started with 19 links on December 1st.  We subtracted the correct amount each day to get to zero.  We wrote the equations on the bell which was easy when we only subtracted one each day but over the weekend we really had to figure out how many links to take off and how to subtract the correct amount.  There were a lot of great discussions about numbers because they could figure out how many days are left but had to workout how many to subtract.  It took great thinking and problem solving.