Would you be concerned about this?

[JessBurs]

So I wrote a few months about about my younger daughter having trouble really getting the whole idea of base 10, and I received some great suggestions.

I ended up making a bunch of colored circles for her for ones, tens, hundreds, and we spent numerous math times pouring over them, trying out different problems, and starting to get how base 10 worked, and the system worked! So thank you!

Now I am back with a related question. So when I had asked the question, we were mostly dealing with the ones and tens columns. As I said, she seemed to really get this and was able to start doing problems in her head by the end, it was great.

Her book just introduced 100s, though, and it was like we went back to square one. We spent yesterday and today working hard with the circles again, and she does seem to get it now. We were able to transition to paper, etc. I just found it a little odd that she wasn't able to translate her understanding of tens and ones into hundreds tens and ones (for the record, she did know beforehand that 10 10s equals 100). When I was teaching her sister she was a bit more intuitive about these things, and I am not sure if the older is just more "gifted" with math and the younger more "typical" or if things just still aren't clicking as well for my younger as I thought...

[Jean in Newcastle]

Nope.  Wouldn't be concerned.  She just needs some more direct hands on teaching at each increment. 

[Kuovonne]

Totally normal. No reason to be concerned. In fact, don’t be surprised if it also takes awhile to grasp that ten hundreds is a thousand.

[JessBurs]

Thanks a lot for the reassurance, both of you!

[kiwik]

I think this is why many curricula do adding each year with an extra digit.  If you are intuitive it drives you nuts because it makes no difference how many digits the numbers have but many kids need it.

[theelfqueen]

Have you had her work on graph/grid paper so the places are concretely aligned? Seeing the problem that way can help. 

[MerryAtHope]

I found that base 10 blocks were really helpful for making these concepts concrete. We did lots and lots of problems just with the blocks--adding or subracting and having to trade in ones for tens or tens for hundreds flats or hundreds for a thousands cube--and likewise having to break them down. Make it really concrete for her how it works before trying to go back to written numbers.