This week your child works with numbers past ten thousand. In 47 205
the 4 is worth forty thousand and the 5 is worth five — both are single
digits. The name of the position is its place value; what it is worth there is its
value. Everything from peso amounts to this year's decimals rests on it.
The activity — ten minutes, one sitting
What you need: five squares torn from a grocery box or a newspaper, about the size
of a bottle cap, and a pencil.
Write one digit on each square: 4, 7, 2, 0, 5. Lay them in a row,
left to right.
Say:
“Forty-seven thousand, two hundred five people live in Barangay
San Isidro.”
Point at the last square:
“What is this 5 worth?”
Then the first:
“And this 4?”
Mix the squares and push them back. Say:
“I will tell you a price. Build it.”
Read it in words only, never digit by digit:
“Forty-seven thousand, two hundred five pesos.”
Point at any one square. Ask both, in this order, every time:
“Which place is it standing in? And how much is it worth?”
Slide the 0 out of the row:
“Read it now.”
It has collapsed to 4 725.
“The zero is not nothing. It was holding a seat.”
Put it back.
Three things to avoid
Do not meet “the 4 is worth four” with the word wrong. Telling does not
shift the commonest Grade 4 mistake. Write 4 and
40 000 side by side and ask which they would rather be handed.
Do not count the places from the left. Start at the digit on the right and count
aloud, pointing: ones, tens, hundreds, thousands, ten thousands.
Do not read it digit by digit — “four, seven, two, zero, five”
— and never put an “and” in the middle. It has one name.
How to tell it is working
Both halves arrive at once:
“It is in the thousands place, so it is worth seven thousand.”
They count from the right under their breath instead of guessing.
Write 5 on the back of every square, so the row reads
5 5 5 5 5. Point at two of them. Two different amounts, no
hesitation.
If they get stuck, nothing has gone wrong. This is five school days, not one evening.
Take one square away so the row reads 4 7 2 5 and ask the same
questions in the same words. Four digits need the same thinking.