Taking Away Past Zero: The Rainbow Castle Hopscotch
In the courtyard of Rainbow Castle, Princess Ruby has painted a long hopscotch number line on the stones, with zero in the middle. When you take away more than you start with, you hop right past zero and land on a negative number.
Remember: 3 − 5 means start on 3 and hop 5 to the left. 3 hops reach zero, and 2 more land on −2. So 3 − 5 = −2. Whenever the number you take away is bigger than the number you start with, the answer is below zero. And 0 take away a number is that number’s opposite: 0 − 6 = −6.
Magic trick: Swap and stick! Swap the numbers to find the difference (5 − 3 = 2), then stick a minus sign in front: −2.
Seek and Find
Look carefully at the picture of Rainbow Castle and find:
- 🟨 Find the hopscotch. The gold box in the middle is zero. There are 5 blue boxes to its left, for −1 to −5, and 5 pink boxes to its right, for 1 to 5: 11 boxes in all.
- 🚩 Find the flags on the towers. There are 6 rainbow pennants.
- 🌹 Find the flower pots. There are 3, full of pink roses.
- 🐱 Millie and her kitten Biscuit are hiding in every picture. Can you spot them?