I’ve been waiting on this not-so-little project until Kylee had a good understanding of place value through 1,000 so that it would hopefully have a memorable impact on her as well, even though she won’t do any other work with large numbers for a little while. I don’t know if we will cover and grid the materials the way we should simply because I don’t have the space to store them anyways.  I think the impact of measuring and making the 10,000 and 100,000 (and discussing what size 1,000,000 would be if we had enough cardboard) will probably be adequate.  My guess is they will stay out for a little while (maybe until we have enough to make the 1,000,000) and then they will eventually find their way to someone’s bedroom or the recycling bin.  I think it is a repeat every 3-4 years kind of project and the impact is actually greater if they do the measuring themselves versus pulling them out of an attic somewhere!

For more information on the hierarchical materials, visit What Did We Do All Day!  Obviously we took a little different approach using cardboard and hot glue and our existing thousand cubes as our base measurement.  If you don’t have golden beads, any base 10 block system (including Math U See blocks) can work as the basis for helping your child see place value relationships.  The blocks from those systems can similarly be used to build the larger place values of 10, 000 and 100, 000 and even 1, 000, 000 if you can find enough cardboard!

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