Counting Back from 20- a fun idea for independent practice

Good morning! Is anyone struggling with students who can't count back? I am very excited to share this silly tool I thought up that will help your kiddos practice their counting backward sequence, INDEPENDENTLY. One little cutie was so excited- she wanted to show all of her friends and the fire started there. Here is how it went.
The lead teacher in first grade showed me her subtraction timed tests and boy oh boy- some kids have no idea what subtraction is all about. Their answers were nonsense. So, I set to work on that handful of kiddos by gathering pre-assessment data- can they count back from 20?
From this handful of first graders some could count back and some could not. I started with the little ones that could not count back from 20. First, we built a connecting cube tower of 20 cubes. We discussed how when you subtract you take away and that counting back is also a take-away. The first of my intervention kids wrote all of her numbers from 20 to zero (I always include zero as many differences result in zero) by taking a cube off of her tower each time and finding the number of how many are left. She wrote her answers on a long continuous strip of squares Yes, she did count them all (counted up from one each time) to find each successive number that was 1 less, as again, she does not have the counting back sequence memorized. It was painful to watch.
From here I felt a little uninspired with how to keep her practicing in my absence and then it came to me. I turned her strip of numbers into a snake that she could practice with. She was so excited about her snake and wanted to show all of her friends.

Looks like today the whole class might be making snakes! The good thing is that you can totally differentiate this idea and kids who can count back from 20 can put larger numbers on their snakes!
Happy counting back!