Teaching Place Value in First Quarter?!?

As you know, our state has adopted the Common Core Standards for Language Arts and Math and we are in implementation year #1. According to these new standards, Place Value is first introduced in the first quarter of the school year. In the past we introduced Place Value during the third quarter, when the students had a much better understanding of numbers. When my team and I saw this BIG change we were a little worried about it! It has been an eye opening experience, but I must say my students are really getting the hang of it the more we practice!

With all that said, I wanted to share some old and new ideas for Place Value. (Please forgive me if I don't remember the exact source of where I got the ideas.)

 

Place Value Mats

When we introduced Place Value in the third quarter of the school year, it was during the Winter season and we made these super cute Penguin mats....

 

I believe this idea came from The Mailbox. My penguin was larger so that I could use it easily during a whole group lesson. Aren't they cute?!
 

These are the numbers that one of my teammates created for us to use on the mats (0-9). We simply ran them on construction paper (color of our choice) and if time aloud, the students got to decorate their numbers. We stored them in sandwich size plastic bags.



We also used Base Ten blocks (tens and ones) to represent numbers on our mats!



Now that we introduce Place Value at the beginning of the school year, my team and I didn't think penguins were really appropriate. However, the mats really helped our students learn and understand the concept of tens and ones. So, we threw out some ideas and this is what I came up with...
 

An owl! Isn't he handsome?!

Same concept, but an animal that they might see/hear this time of the year!! I was inspired by a craft I saw on Pinterest and I simply free-handed the wings, feet, eyes, head, and mouth and made masters of them to run on construction paper. I'm no artist, but I thought the owls turned out so cute (and no two turned out the same, they have such personality)!  

 

 

Count Your Beans

 

This activity can be found on my Math Pinterest board, but actually came from the Kindergarten Crayons blog. It was soooo helpful! I do believe that we played this game for two days instead of just one as originally scheduled in my lesson plans. (Exactly why I use pencil in my plan book!!) Like I said earlier, this was an EYE OPENING experience! Day one, the students were still a little lost. However, by the end of Day 2 most of their little light bulbs were glowing with understanding! I then made this activity one of my Math Stations this week and the students are absolutely flying through it with no problems and need no help with it at all!! Yay!! I'm so proud of my Buckaroos!

 

Thank you for this wonderful resource! I totally recommend using it in your classroom!

 

  Other Place Value Activities

 

On my Math Pinterest board you can find even more Place Value activities. There are just too many great ones to list them all! I hope you enjoy the ideas above and check out the others on my Math board.