What is subtract?

Subtraction is when you take some things away from a group to find out how many are left.

Imagine you have 10 cookies on a plate. You decide to eat 3 of them. Now, you need to figure out how many cookies are still on the plate. That’s subtraction in action!

When we write it down, it looks like this:

10 - 3 = 7

• The 10 is the number of cookies you started with.
• The - means "take away" or "subtract."
• The 3 is how many cookies you ate.
• The = means "equals," and the 7 shows how many are left.

You use subtraction every day, like when:

• You have 5 toys and give 2 to your friend, now you have 3.
• You count down from 10 to see how many seconds are left before a game starts.

It’s just taking some away to find out what's left, simple, real, and helpful!