Lesson 3: The Thousands Places

Show your child the interactive base-10 blocks at the following web link, and give him a chance to practice moving them on the screen. Ask him to use 10 ones to make 10 and 10 tens to make 100. He has used base-10 blocks before to show multi-digit numbers, so this should be a quick review for him.

Give your child the "Thousands, Hundreds, Tens, Ones" sheet and look at the examples provided at the top together. Say, "You know that 10 ones make 1 ten and that 10 tens make 1 hundred. Can you use the interactive blocks to show that 10 hundreds make 1 thousand?" Provide time for your child to do this using the blocks at the web site.

Next, say, "I wonder how many tens are in 2 hundreds?" Allow your child to use the interactive blocks as needed to figure this out. He should find that 20 tens equal 2 hundreds. As needed, say, "If it takes 10 tens to make 1 hundred, how many tens will it take to make 2 hundreds?" and "Remember that tens are much smaller than hundreds so it will take more of them to make the same amount of hundreds. Picture the base-10 blocks as you think about this." Your child should write "20" in the correct blank provided on the sheet. Now, provide time for him to fill in the rest of the blanks, and allow him to use the interactive blocks as he works. He can store this sheet in his Interactive Notebook for future reference as needed.

Once again, write 1, 10, 100, and 1,000 in a column on the whiteboard. Ask your child to write the number that comes next in the pattern. He should write 10,000. If he does not include the comma, say, "Remember that in the video you watched about place value you learned that we use commas to divide groups of digits in big numbers." Provide time for your child to watch the music video at the following link to review where commas belong in numbers.

While your child watches the video, write the following numbers on the whiteboard. When the video is finished, tell your child to draw commas where they belong and then read the numbers aloud. Make sure that he understands that he should start to the right of the ones place and count three places to the left to determine where to put the commas in these numbers.

If needed, explain to your child that we say the digits in the thousands as a group rather than naming each place when we say a number. For example, for 12,873, we say "twelve thousand" rather than "one ten thousand two thousands." Point out that the commas help us know which digits to group together to name large numbers.

Now, your child will complete the "Ten Thousands" sheet by following the instructions provided on it.