Place Value

Merry Christmas everyone!  I hope you all had a beautiful holiday.  Since moving to first grade, I've spent a lot of time researching curriculum and getting to know my lovely new class.  That's why I haven't blogged for a while.

I think one of the hardest things to teach is explaining tens and ones to first-graders who sometimes don't know how to read larger numbers.  As always, I think games, music, and books really help the kids to explore and understand the concept.  Some cool songs I found that delve into this concept are:

Climbing Up This Mountain (Counting by 10's up to 100) by Harry Kindergarten
Count By 10's to 120 by Jack Hartmann
"Grouping by Tens" by Mar Harman
"Counting by Tens" by Mar Harman

I also found a video for teaching place value:

Introduction to Place Value from Khan Academy

It was really funny.  A high school teacher friend of mine told me about Khan Academy.  I had never heard of it before.  I guess the story is that this man started making videos for his niece to explain mathematical concepts.  He's really thorough.  My kids were spellbound when they watched the video.

I haven't found a lot of books that talk about place value, but here are some books that I used this year:

The Cheerios Counting Book by Barbara McGarth
Chicka Chicka 1, 2, 3 by Bill Martin, Jr.
A Collection for Kate by Barbara deRubertis

Because I'm extremely new at teaching first grade, I thought it would be good to go to TPT and see what other first-grade teachers have made for this concept.  I found this terrific "I Have, Who Has" game that worked great for my kids:

I Have, Who Has Tens and Ones Blocks Game by Math Minds

I also made a clip card game for greater than and less than with numbers up to 100:

Greater Than and Less Than Clip Cards to 100

I hope this helps.  If any of you have ideas for teaching tens and ones, please leave a comment below.  Or just leave a comment say say hello!  I miss talking to all of you.