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Subtraction

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This section includes free printable worksheets, tables and flashcards for practicing subtraction with whole numbers. As with the Addition section, there are also online flashcards that randomly ask subtraction questions.

Use the links above or the menu options on the left to select the resources that you need.
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Subtracting with regrouping

Help your child to understand the concept of regrouping when subtracting numbers. Work through the illustrated example to help with this.

Recap: Base Ten Number Systems

We use the base ten number system to write numbers with each place having a value; ones, tens, hundreds, thousands, and so on.

37 shown in tens and ones      64 shown in tens and ones

When subtracting numbers we often have to split-up these groups to help us to do the subtraction. The example below shows this.

42 - 27 shown with place value blocks 42 - 27 showing regrouping of the tens 42 - 27 shown with grouping to equal 15
Start with the ones. 2 - 7 can't be done. We're trying to take away more ones than we have. We need more ones! Let's take 1 of our tens and split it into 10 ones. We've now got 12 ones. We've also got 1 less ten. We can now do the subtraction:
12 - 7 = 5 ones
3 - 2 = 1 ten
Help with Subtraction

The National Library of Virtual Manipulatives has many excellent resources including these Base Blocks Subtraction that you and your child can work with to help grasp the concept of whole number subtraction, including regrouping, with the base-ten number system. Read the instructions carefully to ensure you get maximum benefit from these very good resources.


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Note: If you are an educator and would like to use these online flashcards on your site, then you are free to get them from the HelpingWithMath.com Download Place.