Place Value with Marshmallows


If you have been looking at our learning activities for any time, you already know that we love to include treats and food as a part of our schooling. It draws them in and makes whatever activity we are doing a little more like a celebration, and that is the way learning should feel, I think. Today I reviewed place value with my youngest student using marshmallows. We had three sizes of them: the mini's, the regular-sized and those jumbo-sized ones.  Perfect for showing 1's, 10's and 100's places.
We started out with him just building various numbers, and then after awhile we began doing some three digit addition problem without regrouping.
 Then we got the idea of putting the mini's on a wooden skewer -sticky business, but he seemed to enjoy it anyway. Then we started with addition problems with some regrouping. Once the skewer held 10 mini's, he traded it in for a regular-sized marshmallow.
It was fun, it held his attention and he was happy to learn.
139 shown in marshmallows
We just used a blank piece of paper for our problems.


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