borrowing -- the story

For the past two weeks we've been working on borrowing (long subtraction). I wrote my own story to go with the series of stories we'd used to introduce place value work (long addition and subtraction) and carrying in long addition. It's a two-part story, designed to leave the kids enough room to discover the answer on their own. In the story, the King of Jewel is trying to figure out a way to help his friend, the King of Other, get home to his Kingdom of Other, but his ship is damaged and cannot sail. Both of my boys decided to draw Tricky Mischief discussing the problem with the King of Jewel (J's drawing above, Zoo Boy's below).
Eventually they decide to collect all the jewels in the Kingdom and count them, then take the jewels that are needed to pay the Ship Builder to build a new ship. Tricky Mischief counts out 9,146 jewels into her counting boxes (see my other posts about the Kingdom of Jewel stories for an explanation about the counting boxes). The King then tells her to take 287 jewels from those to pay the shipbuilder. But when Tricky goes to collect 2 silver boxes, 8 china boxes, and 7 jewels from the wooden box, she discovers there aren't enough of each type of box available. What is she to do?? That's where I left the first part of the story, for the kids to ponder the solution to the problem. I did a story drawing along with them, but I simply drew the 9 golden boxes, the 1 silver box, the 4 china boxes and a wooden box with 6 jewels in it, and left it where the kids could see it and think about it.

In the 2nd part of the story, Tricky tells the King that they don't have enough jewels to pay the Ship Builder, and explains the dilemma with the boxes. The King assures her that there are plenty of jewels, and that she should try borrowing to get the amount she needs. So Tricky heads back into the village to collect more jewels from the townspeople, but soon discovers they don't have any more to give. Frustrated and confused, she returns to the castle and begins shouting up at the throne room. (J drew that in the above picture.) She shouts that there aren't any more jewels to be had, because they are all in boxes. That's when she realizes that, indeed, all the jewels are in the boxes. She rushes back to the counting room, grabs the jewels she needs, then joins the Kings at the edge of the sea and pays the Ship Builder his 287 jewels. (I do not explain how she went about counting them out, I left that for the possibility of discovery learning.) She confides to the King of Jewel that she borrowed to get the jewels, and he congratulates her and sends her out to redistribute the remaining jewels. So Tricky goes back into the Kingdom, redistributes the remaining 8,859 jewels, and waves goodbye to the King of Other as he sails away on his new ship (in Zoo Boy's drawing, below).

For my story drawing for this 2nd part of the story, I just wrote "9,146" on the previous days' drawing below the corresponding boxes, then wrote "- 287" below it (lined up in the proper place value columns), then drew a line across the page below that and drew in 8 golden boxes, 8 silver boxes, 5 china boxes, and a wooden box with 9 jewels in it. Again, I left the drawing where the kids could see it and think about it.

I will post next about how we took our story work and moved into the actual calculation work.

If anybody would like a copy of my story, The King of Other's New Ship, just leave a comment on this post with your email address and I will happily send it to you. I only ask that you keep it for your own use rather than sharing it further.