Apply the Take-Apart Strategy Video

David, Rachel, and their parents have collected cans of food to donate for a community-wide food drive. 87 cans, to be exact! They are going to deliver some of them to their local food bank and some of them to their local churches. Let’s help them load the cans into the car.

David is taking out 12 of the cans first. Careful, David! How many cans are left in the house?

This sounds like a subtraction problem to me! 87-12. Let’s use the take apart strategy to help David. First, we will look for a whole ten. Whole tens are multiples of ten, like 10, 20, 30, and so on. What’s that? You don’t see a whole ten? Hmmm, we’ll have to make one then!

Let’s make a whole ten out of the number 12. 12 is made up of a 10 and a 2.

Now it will be much easier to subtract these numbers because we can start with the whole ten! 87-10=77, and 77-2=75. See how fast it is to subtract whole tens? Great job!

Now it’s Mom and Dad’s turn. They are taking out 51 cans to the car. That’s a lot of cans! We need to find out how many cans are left. Let’s subtract 75-51.

Let’s try making a whole ten again. Do you see a whole ten in the number 51? Oh, yes! 51 is made up of 5 tens and 1 one. That’s 50 and 1.

Now we’re ready to subtract! 75-50=25. 25-1=24. Very good! There are 24 cans left.

It’s finally Rachel’s turn. She is taking out 13 cans to the car. Good job, Rachel! We need to subtract 24-13.

Can you make a whole ten from the number 13? Good thinking! 13 is made up of 1 ten and 3 ones. Let’s subtract!

24-10=14, and 14-3=11. There are 11 cans left in the kitchen. These cans must be for David and Rachel to take to their local churches! Hooray!

Thanks for using the take apart strategy to help David, Rachel, and their parents. Now they are ready to deliver all of the cans!