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I'd never heard of the Austrian method before, but it seems much tidier and more logical than the American method, which I was taught.

That was my reaction to it, as well. It might suit dysgraphic kids, too.

If you homeschool you can probably do whatever you like - even if your children had to do standardised testing I'd be astonished if it cared what method they used. Fwiw noone (but me?) ever taught DS subtraction and I'm not sure what you'd call what he does! I do remember him saying with delight "we unwrap this bag of ten, and inside we fiiiiinnndddd...... Ten units!" at a certain stage!

We reached multiple digits addition and substraction with my oldest child through afterschooling in 1st grade. And so (European) taught him the Austrian method.

When they finally reached that last year (3rd grade!) he taught his class the Austrian method. His teacher was blown away.

I found the "standard method", when I was finally introduced to it, incredibly cumbersome, especially in cases like the one 22B shows above. The fact that it forces you to work first left to right then right to left is an issue.

ColinsMum, was your son using Dreambox? That's what they show as a visual aide for this stage.

No, but it's a pretty obvious visual aid!

Does anyone else remember Dienes apparatus? When I was at school we did arithmetic in bases from 2 to 10, pretty much without favouring 10. We had sets of wooden equipment for each base - e.g. in base 7, little unit cubes, then longs that looked like 7 of them stuck together, flats that looked like 7 of those stuck together into a square shape, blocks that were, well, you guess, and in the lower bases long-blocks and flat-blocks. There was lots of "change a block for 7 flats" involved in the arithmetic. Great stuff, IMHO.

We had those for base 10; they call them Cuisenaire rods. I'm digging around now for sets like you described that come in bases 2, 3, etc.

I was taught the American traditional method but just realized (by trying to solve 22B's subtraction example) that I do not know how to subtract, no matter which method I use. BTW, I am an engineer that works with numbers all day. The best way to subtract,IMO, is to use excel or a calculator.

ColinsMum and Val, I'm thinking I'm going to hack the multi-base Cuisenaire sets with Popsicle sticks and dry beans. I refuse to pay several hundred dollars for a tool that DS will, in all likelihood, discard within the first hour of use. In the meantime, the gluing can make for some good fine motor work together. I figure I can build bases 2 through 10 on less than $20, then we can have a bonfire once the concept is down.

But Cuisenaire rods only do the "long"s part, right? What I'm talking about would also take 7 length-7 rods and stick them together side by side to make a 7x7 square "flat", etc.