Place Value Time

I'm so grateful for the weekend! I'm NOT so grateful for being sick all night. I think I ate something that didn't agree with my stomach, and let me just tell you it was a loooonnngg Saturday night. I think I've only slept about 2 hours. I'm having to stay home from all church activities today, which is annoying, BUT it's allowing me to have some work/blogging time as I'm snuggled up in our big chair.

I visited place value in math last week again. We began the week before, but I just don't think my kids "got it." Do you know what I mean? I just don't want to move on until they truly understand (what's the point?)  Since we were working with folktales, fairy tales, and fables in reading, I thought I would try to branch this out into math. Introducing Place Value Bears:

I came up with a story that closely resembles Goldilocks and the Three Bears, except a turkey is the main character, and the Three Bears represent the ones, tens, and hundreds. The turkey is hiding from hunters, and runs into the cabin for safety. He sees a bowl with ONE kernel of corn, TEN kernels of corn, and a HUNDRED kernels of corn. Of course he chooses Daddy Hundred's bowl to eat. Same idea with a pillow. We even made a Venn Diagram to compare this story with the original Goldilocks and the Three Bears.

Then we made these:

And these:

The kids colored their own copy of the story and put them into their math notebooks for reference:

And this:

They also sorted numbers onto these:

Overall, it went REALLY well, and I think most of my kids are getting it! If anything, it's been a great reference when I'm redirecting kids to the right answer! They totally get the concept of daddy, mommy, baby. I'm spending one more week on place value to nail down the other concepts (word form, expanded form, etc.) If you are interested in these activities I used this week in your classroom, you can get them HERE.