Saturday, May 16, 2009

Teaching Place Value

In math, Andrew and Evie are learning place value. I'd forgotten that it's a bit of a tough concept, but fortunately I seldom throw anything away and I still had what I created to teach the concept to the older kids.

The Place Value Village



With this visual aid, I teach the concept of borrowing, carrying and place value. We practice writing large numbers and teach how to read them. Each "house" is named after a place value: the Ones House, Tens House, and the Hundreds House. Each group of three houses is on a "street": Ones Street, Thousands Street, Millions Street and Billions Street.


Each street is separated by a comma and there's a decimal point to the right of the last house.


I attached the houses to a white board, so the kids could practice below and erase easily. After nearly 10 years, the construction paper had faded and the cardstock looks a little the worse for wear, but it's still serviceable! This is by far one of the best tools I ever made to use for math!




1 comment:

Rebecca said...

Would you believe that this is one of the most popular posts to date on this blog? Who'd've thunk it???

If you like this idea and decide to try it, let me know! I'd love to know how the place value village works for you and if you tweaked anything to make it work better!

Enjoy!