LOL I was memorising my periodic table when I decided to take a break and listen to The Elements Song by Tom Lehrer. (Yes, the one everyone was introduced to in Sec1.)

And I found this song after some searching. It parodies the "New Math" approach to teaching math in the 1960s, and students around my age might find the "base 10" thing familiar - we were taught math that way in kindergarten and primary school. Maybe they still teach it this way now, but I've left primary school for so long, I've no idea what they're doing now.

You can't take three from two,
Two is less than three,
So you look at the four in the tens place.
Now that's really four tens
So you make it three tens,
Regroup, and you change a ten to ten ones,
And you add 'em to the two and get twelve,
And you take away three, that's nine.
Is that clear?

Now instead of four in the tens place
You've got three,
'Cause you added one,
That is to say, ten, to the two,
But you can't take seven from three,
So you look in the hundreds place.

From the three you then use one
To make ten ones...
(And you know why four plus minus one
Plus ten is fourteen minus one?
'Cause addition is commutative, right!)...
And so you've got thirteen tens
And you take away seven,
And that leaves five...

Well, six actually...
But the idea is the important thing!

Now go back to the hundreds place,
You're left with two,
And you take away one from two,
And that leaves...?

Everybody get one?
Not bad for the first day!

Hooray for New Math,
New-hoo-hoo Math,
It won't do you a bit of good to review math.
It's so simple,
So very simple,
That only a child can do it!

Now, that actually is not the answer that I had in mind, because the
book that I got this problem out of wants you to do it in base
eight. But don't panic! Base eight is just like base ten really -
if you're missing two fingers! Shall we have a go at it?