Place Value At Home

You don’t have to be brilliant at maths yourself to help your child - numbers are everywhere! Here are some simple ideas to help your child understand larger numbers:

- look at house prices. Can they read it to you? If you read it, can they write it down?

- football (or any sports!) transfer figures. Can they order them from largest to smallest?

- temperatures are excellent for negative numbers. Look up temperatures in different cities, can they rank them from coldest to warmest? Find the difference between the warmest and coolest place?

- play ‘bingo.’ For example, we can choose 6 numbers. If we pick 8, a decision is made to put that digit in the hundred thousands? Or risk a 9 coming to go in the ten thousands? Read the numbers we have created. Can we write them?

- have a place value treasure hunt. Who can find a number with a 5 in the tens? A 6 in the ten thousands?

If your child is really struggling, take a step back! Once a child can read a 3 digit number, they can read any number. When we understand ones, tens and hundreds, these values will always be repeated, along with a comma and another word. We move on to one thousands/ten thousands/hundred thousands.

Have you any other fun ways to find numbers?