Building Big Numbers (Formation)

Materials

• Golden bead material or base-ten blocks: at least 9 units, 9 tens, 9 hundreds, and a few thousands
• A set of large number cards 1–9,000 (printable card stock works well; color the numerals: units green, tens blue, hundreds red, thousands green)
• A tray and a work mat (felt rectangle, placemat, or towel)
• Household substitute for beads: beans, bean sticks of ten, hundred-cards of glued beans

No materials at home? Use the virtual Golden Beads & Mat or Large Number Cards.

Before this lesson

• Introduction to the Golden Beads
• Introduction to the Number Cards

Aims

Presentation

1. 1 Set up a "bank" of beads at one edge of the table and the mat in the middle. Start small: place one number card, such as 3, and ask your child to fetch that many units on the tray.The card says three. Bring me three units from the bank, please.
2. 2 Repeat with a tens card, such as 40. Your child brings four ten-bars and lays them in a neat column to the left of the units.Forty — that is four tens.
3. 3 Do the same for a hundreds card and a thousands card, always placing beads in columns: thousands on the left, then hundreds, tens, and units.
4. 4 Now combine: lay out cards for a full number, such as 2,436, one card per place. Your child fetches each quantity in turn and places the matching card above each column.Two thousand, four hundred, thirty… and six.
5. 5 Stack the cards: place the 6 on top of the 30, the 30 on top of the 400, the 400 on top of the 2,000, so the zeros hide and the number reads 2,436. Slide the stack next to the beads.Look — two thousand four hundred thirty-six. You built it!
6. 6 Reverse the game: build a quantity of beads yourself and ask your child to find and stack the cards that say what is on the mat.
7. 7 In the virtual material, choose the "Build a number" mode. It shows a numeral with stacked cards; your child taps pieces from the bank and presses Check, and each column is marked right or not yet.

Points of interest

• The magic moment the stacked cards hide the zeros and the number "appears"
• Fetching beads across the room and trying to hold the whole order in mind
• Numbers with a zero in the middle, like 2,046 — an empty column with no beads at all

Control of error

• Each card must match its bead column; a column of four ten-bars under a card reading 50 looks and counts wrong
• Counting the beads back place by place reveals any error
• The virtual material marks each place ✓ or ✗ when your child presses Check — it never just gives the answer

Vocabulary

• place
• units
• tens
• hundreds
• thousands
• zero as a place holder

Variations

• Bring me game: say a number aloud with no cards showing and let your child build it from memory
• Silly banker: ask for 14 units so your child discovers the column overflows — and trade ten of them for a ten-bar
• Hide the running total in the virtual material and let your child name the number on the mat before showing it

Extensions

• Build two numbers side by side and ask which is larger, and how you can tell by looking at the thousands first
• Write the built number on paper in four colors: green units, blue tens, red hundreds, green thousands

Follow-up work (pencil & paper)

• Place-value practice pages: your child writes the number shown by pictured beads, and draws beads for a written number.Printable: Place Value & Expanded Form
• Golden bead picture pages for counting and coloring quantities up to the thousands.Printable: Golden Bead Pictures
• Expanded-form writing: your child writes 2,436 = 2,000 + 400 + 30 + 6 for numbers you dictate at the table.

What comes next

When building and reading feel easy, play the Bird’s-Eye View with the full set of number cards, and then begin Golden Bead Addition — two families of beads pushed together into one big sum.

Next in this strand: The Bird's-Eye View: 1 to 9,000