# Place Value



## kinderfeld (Jan 29, 2006)

My DS is struggling to understand this concept. I am having difficulties explaining it to him. The Abeka teacher guide book has not been very helpful. I have had him watching video's on the internet. He is still not getting it. Should I just move on and approach it again in a month? How did you explain Place Value to your kids?


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## Speck (Jun 12, 2012)

Try starting with whole place values first - ones, tens, hundreds, etc. With a younger one I'd only go to about thousands, then progress to dollars and cents, just focusing on two digits after the decimal. Once he gets that you can move on to a third and so on.


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## cindy-e (Feb 14, 2008)

we used a number neighborhood. I made it on a peice of poster board. ones was a house, tens was a bigger house, hundreds was the biggest house etc... I made little squares to equal 1's, a strip of little squares to make 10's. and a block of little squares to make 100s. (You could easily make that on a computer. doesn't take much time. they like to help with cutting anyway.) I showed them how they were related first. ten 1's become a 10. up until 9, they live in the ones house. 10 tens become an hundred, but up until 90, they live in the tens house. they stacked them on top of each other to see how they were related too... Then I wrote down random numbers to have them practice creating them in the houses. For example... 3 hundred fourty five = 3 hundred squares in the hundreds house, four tens strips in the tens house, and five ones squares in the fives house. does that make sense? 

also, I also made them (when they were very little) call the tens by a different name... instead of fourty, they would say 4 T's (for tens), fifty was 5 t's. so for example, for that number above, 345, they would say 3 hundred, four t's and 5. when they were no longer confused, they naturally went to the way people usually say numbers... but I knew they understood what the numbers meant. 

This works well with teaching fractions too, fwiw. 
ETA: If you've ever seen math u see... it's basically the same thing. i'm not sure they had that when my older kids were young. This way is much cheaper. =0) I am told you can buy manipulatives from educational stores for this kind of thing, but I always made mine. 

HTH,
cindyc.


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## KyMama (Jun 15, 2011)

I haven't used this, but I pinned it on Pinterest to use with my youngest when the time comes.

HTH


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## mekasmom (Jan 19, 2010)

I like the cups.
I always made a place chart on poster board with the decimal point and each word printed vertically under the line of the value. That way when you put in numbers you could just allow the child to read the words under them to learn place values. Five million, four hundred and seventy-two thousand, one hundred twenty-three and thirty-four one-hundredths, or whatever.


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## kinderfeld (Jan 29, 2006)

Oh I like those ideas They seem very hands on for my DS. I think most of his problem is he's too busy trying to hurry so he can go play. If I could just harness his energy to play and direct it to learning.....boys!
Thanks for the help. It's greatly appreciated.


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## ErinP (Aug 23, 2007)

I realize this is a week old, but hopefully it'll still help someone. These are what I've always used both while homeschooling as well as in public classrooms:









Plastic Base Ten Number Concepts Set: Ideal School Supply: 0013587211127: Amazon.com: Books
Truly, I can't imagine trying to introduce kids to place value without them... 
(We move on to something like the cups after they have a good grasp of what tens vs. hundreds vs. ones actually _is_)

BTW, when you work on decimals/fractions, use MONEY!  Pennies, dimes and dollars.


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## Louisiana Mom (Oct 15, 2004)

I just wanted to say I love the cup idea. It's effective & inexpensive. When my daughter was younger we used Rod & Staff & I really liked their math.


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## TenBusyBees (Jun 15, 2011)

Louisiana Mom said:


> I just wanted to say I love the cup idea. It's effective & inexpensive. When my daughter was younger we used Rod & Staff & I really liked their math.


Same here. 

R&S uses a barn and stall to visually teach the concept of place value... love the cups to concrete it in.


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## ErinP (Aug 23, 2007)

The only drawback is that kids have to have a fairly concrete grasp of the numbers to begin with. Some _will_ and you can easily move on to the abstract concept of digits with zeros after them (ie a system like the cups, or just a chart on a piece of paper) and they'll catch it quickly. 

But others need to see that there are tangible objects here. Ten of them, one hundred of them, etc. 
I've even had kids that count the tens blocks each time to make sure there are really ten of them on there. Just because that's where they're at, developmentally.


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## Sonshine (Jul 27, 2007)

cindy-e said:


> we used a number neighborhood. I made it on a peice of poster board. ones was a house, tens was a bigger house, hundreds was the biggest house etc... I made little squares to equal 1's, a strip of little squares to make 10's. and a block of little squares to make 100s. (You could easily make that on a computer. doesn't take much time. they like to help with cutting anyway.) I showed them how they were related first. ten 1's become a 10. up until 9, they live in the ones house. 10 tens become an hundred, but up until 90, they live in the tens house. they stacked them on top of each other to see how they were related too... Then I wrote down random numbers to have them practice creating them in the houses. For example... 3 hundred fourty five = 3 hundred squares in the hundreds house, four tens strips in the tens house, and five ones squares in the fives house. does that make sense?
> 
> also, I also made them (when they were very little) call the tens by a different name... instead of fourty, they would say 4 T's (for tens), fifty was 5 t's. so for example, for that number above, 345, they would say 3 hundred, four t's and 5. when they were no longer confused, they naturally went to the way people usually say numbers... but I knew they understood what the numbers meant.
> 
> ...


We used MathUSee that uses the number houses.


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## Sonshine (Jul 27, 2007)

ErinP said:


> I realize this is a week old, but hopefully it'll still help someone. These are what I've always used both while homeschooling as well as in public classrooms:
> 
> 
> 
> ...


This is similar to Math U See, except they color code their blocks.


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## kinderfeld (Jan 29, 2006)

Currently we are using the abeka math. I like the advanced pace it gives, but I am wondering if the math u see would be better for him. He is one of the kids that has to count the entire 10 block just to make sure there are 10. This is why i think he is having a difficult time grasping the concept.


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## ErinP (Aug 23, 2007)

Part of that he'll outgrow, regardless of system you use. It's a shift from concrete to abstract thinking that we all went through. Usually in the range of 3rd grade, but like all things, some kids are earlier and some are later. It sounds like your son is still firmly in the concrete process though, so abstract math (like just using symbols/pictures to represent real things) is going to be a challenge...

But no matter which curriculum you use, I'd recommend getting base10 blocks not just for place value but also for borrowing and carrying in addition and subtraction. 
That regrouping stuff is hard!
Sixteen bucks at Amazon. You can't go wrong.


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## mistletoad (Apr 17, 2003)

One of mine is a visual learner and it finally clicked when I gave him a big bucket and a small bucket. 10 small bucket fulls filled the big bucket. So if he filled the small bucket 11 times he had 1 full big bucket (tens) and 1 full small bucket (ones). Until then he couldn't see why you couldn't have 11 in the ones (because there really are 11 ones in 11).
Sometimes the struggle comes from us not knowing which part of it they don't understand.


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