Pick a Place Value

Confused about place value? Roll for the highest numbers you can in this exciting game. Soon the numerals will always fall into the right place.

• 1.

  If you were a grown-up, would you take a five-figure salary? What is the highest five-figure salary possible? The lowest? Although it will be a few years before you have to choose, it’s important to understand place value now. You need it to solve computation problems involving trading and when renaming money. Reading numbers such as 12,374,024 will be easier, too. Here’s a game to help you figure out how place values work.

• 2.

  <STRONG>Make a number cube</STRONG>. Shape a cube with Crayola Model Magic®. Press on dots of a contrasting color. Make sure the sums of opposite sides of the cube equal 7 (2 and 5, 6 and 1, 3 and 4). Dry your cube overnight.

• 3.

  <STRONG>Create a game board.</STRONG> Use Crayola Rainbow Twistables to give your paper game board an eye-catching title. With Crayola Washable Markers, divide the rest of your paper into columns and rows. The number of columns determines how high you will be rolling (five columns are for tens of thousands, seven columns are millions). How many rows are you ready to play?

• 4.

  <STRONG>Play your game!</STRONG> Roll the cube. Decide in which column to place the numeral and record it with a Twistable. Try to create the highest number you can in each row. Repeat rolling until all the columns in one row have been filled. Figure out what the highest possible number could have been if you had put numerals in different places. Repeat for each row.

• 5.

  <STRONG>What is your strategy?</STRONG> Write some of your strategies for playing Pick a Place Value. Display your completed game boards next to written strategies. Ready for some competition?

Benefits

• Students design individual place-value game boards.
• Students apply prediction strategies while attempting to create the highest number.
• Students display their completed game boards and written strategies for playing.

Adaptations

• Roll for the lowest numbers.
• Play with a partner or in small groups. Organize a tournament.
• Explore the abacus. It easily adapts itself to any base numbering system. Children with sight impairments are sometimes taught how to use the abacus to do calculations.
• Here’s a fun way to demonstrate that 9 is the largest number ever found in a base-10 place-value spot. Create a gigantic place-value board outdoors with Crayola Sidewalk Paint. Roll a large die and use that number to indicate how many students should stand in the ones column. How many more students are needed to reach a total of 10? Roll the die again and add that many more students in the ones area. When there are at least 10 students, they link arms and move into the tens column, leaving behind any more than 10. The linked students choose one student to be the place holder representing their group of 10 and this person wears a headband or armband. Repeat for the hundreds column. The remaining students are recycled back through the ones column. Review reasons why groups move across the place-value board. Continue to roll the die until all students are standing on the board. What is the number represented?
• Find examples from literature in which the author has fun with base 10. The system is based on the idea that every time you have 10 of anything, it gets a new name. For example, 10 tens is termed hundreds, 10 hundreds is named thousands, 10 hundred thousa