Non workbook ideas for learning place value?

[Once]

My youngest, who is 7 years old, is really struggling with place value. He isn't able to understand the difference between 18 and 81 even after a year of waiting and trying various approaches. We used Singapore last year because it was cheap and in the house and now are using MUS. Through my searches I found that these two are considered very helpful for understanding place value. It has been a year and he still does not get it and I feel like we should not go on unless he gets it. So I am kind of stuck here waiting and trying various things.

 

Does anyone have resources or ideas to help him get past this? I have built some numbers with the MUS blocks and used a variety of his favorite books and magazines to count and create random numbers of fishing tackle and angry birds. Still no memory the next day. He temporaily will understand but cannot remember it Monday morning or the next time he sees it in the same or different way.

 

I saw the ebook by Primary Education Oasis and will download and print but it seems more advanced than he is ready for (ie. There are logic questions with clues and the student finds the number on the hundreds chart). I also saw a video about place value bowl games by Teaching Tipster that I will set up this week that has dice that you roll and put into the units bowl, the tens bowl or the hundreds bowl.

 

Does anyone have other ideas for helping? I would rather fun/concrete ones as the paper pencil approach is just not working. To be honest, he is a slower learner so I will need many different ways to approach this......the standard short lesson has not worked. My other kids got it all pretty easy but he isn't.

 

Thanks for any ideas you can share!!!

[Lily_Grace]

You have MUS blocks? Have you made Decimal Street? It's a great way to show the shift down the road.

 

I created graph paper that had strips of color to show place value. It went pink, blue, green, pink, blue, green, white, for doing multiplication problems, but you could probably add a white strip between each grouping of three. We could isolate the number and show the corresponding number of sticks in that color. A simple version of that is the Montessori tens board, but you can make your own with printing out numbers on pink, blue, and green paper and having him make different configurations and show the same in the blocks.

[Mandamom]

You said that you build numbers but what about him. He should be building numbers everyday until he gets it. If he needs the blocks to work all of his problems he should use them so he is concretely understanding what it is he's doing.

 

I'm sorry if I'm misunderstanding your post it wasn't intentional.

[morosophe]

You have MUS blocks? Have you made Decimal Street? It's a great way to show the shift down the road.

 

Absolutely use Decimal Street. Don't forget the "tornado game"--my son loved that.

[alisoncooks]

Check Pinterest. I've found many fun, hands-on math ideas that have been a big hit for my kids there! Just search "place value" -- a surprising amount come up.

[Karen in CO]

He should use the blocks to build them everyday and use them for the math problems until he "gets" it. It doesn't come all at once. If he knows money, dollars, dimes, and pennies are great also. You give him the pennies, and he trades them in for dimes then counts the pennies left. Another good way to model the numbers is to bundle up toothpicks or craft sticks in groups of ten. The decimal street from MUS is a great tool, but with all of these, expect that lots of repetition is required.

[Once]

Thanks for the Pinterest idea. I hadn't thought of that.

 

He has been building each question and each day. I build them in front of him sometimes. He builds from numbers and also writes numbers from the blocks.

 

We did decimal street early but I should redo that one. We lost the poster from when my daughter used it years ago.....my son understood it right away so it has been six years and a move since I saw it. I will probably just make another.

 

We have been counting everything we can get our hands on and he seems to get the right order but connot make the number correctly. So he gets to 18 and I ask him to make it and he does 81 (things like that). We are using the blocks each lesson. I downloaded number cards from motessouri that had the numbers in colors like MUS so when I get that started maybe that will help.

 

He sometimes gets it but it isn't reliable enough to move on. :confused:

 

Off to check Pinterest! Thanks.

 

I don't remember coming across the Tornado game......could you explain it?

[Walking-Iris]

Cusinaire rods. And then say "a ten and an 8 make?" 18. Rinse and repeat.

 

http://world-shaker.tumblr.com/post/20587152507/an-awesome-and-simple-little-teaching-tool-over-at use a hundred chart

 

http://media-cache-ec6.pinterest.com/upload/154318724701524243_qV3JPztB.jpg use paint sample cards

 

http://kwilliams.canyonrimacademy.org/?page_id=319 I printed these and they helped my ds a ton. Better than anything else really. We would do problems like "4 hundreds + 7 tens + 5 ones make?" and he'd build that with those cards.

 

You could also make a table thousands, hundreds, tens, ones across the top and then count various objects and put them into the table to build a number.

 

Use graph paper.

 

Also he's 7 so there's time to keep working on these concepts. Mixing up 18 and 81---does he understand one is more than or less than the other? If not I'd work on that concept and work with a hundred chart. Have him fill out a blank one until he understands the order. Also work on a number line.

[SilverMoon]

Have him build every single number he works with using math manipulatives. Every. single. number. Don't slow that down at all until he can tell you in his words, without a single prompt.

 

If you don't have the math manipulatives, a big gob of 2x2 Lego bricks works wonderfully.

[Critterfixer]

I drew pockets on the whiteboard. Each pocket is for certain values. The ones all go in the proper pocket, the tens in the next, the hundreds in the next and so on. Each number is shown with individual shapes--I used circles for ones with a one written on them, and rectangles for the rest, each with 10 or 100 written on them depending on what pocket they were in. Drawing out the pocket for the number below seems to have been a pretty good visual aid for the boys when it came to showing how to regroup a ten. At any rate, it has worked far better than hands-on stuff for them.

And we practiced a lot and still do for higher value numbers. (Draw blanks and say the number as hundreds, tens, ones, etc.)