Place Value Activities and Craft Help Needed

[LeftField]

We're learning about place value right now. I am looking for craft ideas and visual plays of demonstrating place value. Also, we own connecting math rods. I'm not sure if math was ever taught to me this way (and I'm not a math person at all) so I'm having a hard time figuring out the clearest way to illustrate place value. Also, my son really likes making things so he would jump at the chance to make some place value displays. Can anyone help me out with ideas or links? Thank you.

[bluehalo]

Hi K! How are you?

There was a thread a few months ago that I remembered having a great idea about making place value manipulatives out of beans glued to popsicle sticks. I had just bought a set of base ten blocks, and I was wishing I could return them and do the popsicle sticks instead

Here's the thread:
http://www.mothering.com/discussions...popsicle+stick

I've missed seeing you around!

[Serendipity]

hi there,

we are using math-u-see, which has a great concept. Each place value is a house on decimal street. So when we write 156, we say there is one 'hundred' home, five 'tens' home and six 'units' in the ones home. Before ds was getting it we would draw a street with houses and he'd fill in the values. So with the rods, i will either make a list of numbers and he works the number out on the rods and then writes the values into the houses, or i'll use the rods to make the numbers and have him figure out what the number is and then write the values into the houses. i'll try to confuse him too by switching the ones and tens to make sure he's really getting it. So with that, you could actual make little houses out of boxes or something and decorate them maybe?

sorry if all that was confusing, i've been awake for 27 hours:

good luck!

[annettemarie]

Subbing

[LeftField]

Originally Posted by bluehalo

Hi K! How are you?

There was a thread a few months ago that I remembered having a great idea about making place value manipulatives out of beans glued to popsicle sticks. I had just bought a set of base ten blocks, and I was wishing I could return them and do the popsicle sticks instead

Here's the thread:
http://www.mothering.com/discussions...popsicle+stick

I've missed seeing you around!

Hi!!! It's great to see you! I need to post an update in the other place!

[LeftField]

Thanks for the ideas and the link to the other thread! I think we're going to make some popsicle and bean counting rods this week. The added benefit is that my 3 year old can help too. Thanks!

[wonderactivist]

Sorry if this is rather late, but I did have some ideas to throw in the place value pot.

Actually, we used pirate stories with beads, homemade "treasure bags" and chests. I only took it up to hundreds in second grade, so we used jewels for ones, then each little bag held ten, and the treasure chests were 10 bags (100). You can find tiny unfinished chests at the hobby shops for very little, so he can paint them. (They come in handy to store marbles and such.) Then you can take it up to 1000's with ships that hold 10 chests each.

Another common approach is the place value houses. If you just Google "place value houses" (without the quotations), there are
several lessons online. Math-U-See has an online sample. My fave of the ones listed is this one from the Teacher's Cafe.

I would use something nicer than stick-ups for number markers, and I would
tell a story instead of just calling out numbers, just taking it a step farther by infusing it with more imagination.

Warm wishes,

Lucie

[LeftField]

Lucie,

Thank you so much for the pirate idea! Both my kids are really into pirates right now. The problem is that I haven't really thought about numbers this way. I was always very intimidated by math. Now that I have some ideas, I think I could come up with more stories.

Thank you!