The easy to take away

Once a child has grasped the concept of the difference between two numbers, he or she can understand the easy way of subtracting two numbers. Of course, a child can perform subtraction this way even if they don't understand why it works, but understanding is better.
It is based on the premise that adding is easier than subtracting. So to find the difference between two number all one has to do is start at the smaller number and count up to the bigger number. The quantity that is counted during in this process is the answer to the subtraction.
For example lets take 45 away from 224. If we were to subtract the conventional way, since, in the units column, we are trying to take a 5 from a 4, we couldn't do it without stealing a ten from the tens column and putting it as ten units into the units column, so as to have enough units make the subtraction. Similarly, in the tens column, we would have to steal a hundred from the hundreds column and put it as ten tens in the tens column to have enough tens available to make the subtraction. But the counting up method avoids all this palaver.
Let's do the subtraction using the counting up method. We start at 45, and we want to end up with a 4 in the units column. So we add units onto our original 45 until we get to a number with a 4 in the units column. The first number which gives us a 4 there is 54, at which point we have added 9. This is the value of the unit in our answer so we write it down in the units column of our answer. Now we've got to 54 and we've got to get to 224, so we count up in tens until we get a 2 in the tens columns, so 54 and ten makes 64, 74, 84, 94, 104, 114, 124... right we've got a 2 in the tens column now so how many tens did we have to add? 7, right? (You can count the number of tens on your fingers as go up, that way you don't have to keep two numbers in your head at the same time). This 7 is the number of tens in the answer so we write that down in the tens column of the answer. So we're now at 124 and we want to get to 224, so we count up in hundreds. It takes one hundred to get there. So we write this down in the hundreds column of the answer. So the answer is 179, and the only paper and pencil that was needed was the ones we wrote the answer down with.
Puppet Maths teaches children to do their calculations the easy way, as well as more formal methods, so the child can select whichever method is most appropriate for the question they face.