Place Value and Partitioning

We recently bought this wooden abacus as both a learning tool for the twins and a toy for the 2 year old. Since the older two can count confidently back and forth to 100, I thought now was a good time to introduce larger numbers and place value to them.

I explained to them how to use an abacus to represent larger numbers, writing a colour-coded list on the whiteboard to clarify and make clear the pattern:

1s = units
10s = tens
100s = hundreds
1,000s = thousands
10,000s = ten thousands
100,000s = hundred thousands
1,000,000s = millions
10,000,000s = ten millions
100,000,000s = hundred millions
1,000,000,000s = billions

 I stopped there since our abacus has 10 rows, but I was pleased when they asked if ten billions came next, then hundred billions and what was after that? MashaAllah they're both very logical in their thinking (to make up for their lack of artistic flair lol).

Over the next few days we played with the abacus, taking turns to make numbers for each other to read - first only using the top 2 rows, then the first 3 and finally the first 4) - or saying a number and getting the other to make it on the abacus.

Once they were confident with this, I modelled on the whiteboard how to partition two digit numbers into tens and units, i.e.

          Tens       Units
12  =    10     +     2
          (1 ten  + 2 units)
58 =     50     +     8
          (5 tens + 8 units)
93 =     90     +     3
          (9 tens + 3 units)

etc. then carried on the list, leaving the Tens and Units columns blank for the girls to try and fill in together. I made sure to get them to further split the Tens into e.g. 5 tens = 50 which helped practise their 10x table too.

We repeated this over a couple of days, with different numbers on the whiteboard each morning for them to fill in independently, going up to 3 digit numbers on the last day for an extra challenge. 💪

To summarise and check their understanding, I then photocopied the relevant pages from Letts Monster Maths - Maths (Age 5-6), Collins Easy Learning - Mental Maths (Ages 5-7) and CGP Key Stage One Maths - The Question Book onto a double-sided page, for them to work through together and then file away in their folders - pictured at the start of this entry.

Since then, they've continued to play with the abacus both alone and with each other, repeating our games from earlier. 😁😁