Meteorite Math

Right now in school Junior is doing a unit on Space and we are trying to find ways connect all of his subjects to this unit topic.
Today we had been talking about meteorites so I decided to do some meteorite math with him.
It was a huge hit and I don't think Junior realized he was actually doing a math lesson.

I used a board with a piece of felt attached to it. This is also his puzzle board.
I attached little pieces of velcro to several lightweight plastic balls(you could also use the smaller balls but for Junior using eye gaze the larger ones work better). The more little pieces of velcro the better it will stick when thrown against the board.
These are the numbers and symbols we use daily in Junior's math lessons. I ran them off in a very large print and used contact paper to laminate them. Added a piece of velcro to the back and they are ready for use.

Of course you can adapt this to whatever your childs needs and level are but I will share how Junior used it.
I started out by telling him that for now the board is the moon and the balls are meteorites. We initially just threw the meteorites at the moon and then would count how many we had thrown.
Once Junior got into that part I started holding up two numbers and asking him how many meteorites he wanted to throw at the moon. He would choose a number and then I would place that number at the top of the board followed by a plus symbol. After we threw the first number of meteorites we would do the same thing for the second number and then count them all together.
I have been trying to introduce subtraction to Junior for awhile and it has been a struggle. He is slowly getting the concept but it just hadn't really clicked. Tonight we took some huge leaps forward and it seemed to really make sense to him.
I put several meteorites on the moon and then I told him that he was going in his space ship to knock the meteorites off the moon(I think I will make a little space ship cutout for him when we do this next). Junior got a big giggle out of that and then we discussed how many we would knock off into space.
After we knocked them off I told him okay you had 3 meteorites and your space ship knocked 2 of them into space now how many are left. I held up a couple numbers for him to choose from and he didn't miss a beat. I then followed with 3 take away 2 equals 1.

Junior loved throwing the balls at the board and seeing them roll down a little as the velcro caught. I am sure just that part will be a favorite game of his now. I have considered attaching some type of bulls eye to the board. I am also sure there are lots more ways to use the velcro balls for math.