Hmm, place value is pretty abstract; I don't think you can hurry it much. My kids all got naturally curious about big numbers at around age 3 and their understanding of place value grew gradually out of that over the next year or two. They saw groups things that were more than ten, and counted on their fingers, and discovered it was efficient and easy to group in tens. Life provides copious opportuntities for mathematical observations that promote place-value awareness and I think it's best if the kids discover the concept themselves -- because then you're sure it's coming in a manner, pace and direction that works for their learning style and developmental readiness. I didn't do anything much other than answer their questions and have some base-10-set manipulatives around (actually I didn't even have those for my eldest). I wrote this blog post about my youngest at age 4.5, at which point she was already quite handy with addition, subtraction, multiplication and negative numbers.. She's now 7 and easily doing long division with decimals, so the fact that she didn't start understanding place value until age 4.5 certainly hasn't slowed her down at all.
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Having said that, if you're just looking to help your ds understand how big a hundred or a thousand is, just find something in large quantity to help him count! Pennies, fallen leaves, dried navy beans, grains of rice. I don't think you need anything special. This was the sort of thing that my kids took natural delight in. Once they could count beyond ten, they spent ages counting as high as they could, and finding piles of things to count.Â
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Miranda
