Place Value games, worksheets, activities, and charts for grades preK through 5th! These Place Value printables will engage your students in learning math concepts while also providing teachers with free teaching resources. Whether you teach in a preschool, homeschool, or grade school setting, these place-value activities, charts, games, and worksheets are for you! Grab our Interactive Kindergarten Math Curriculum and add even more fun to your math block!
Free Place Value Teaching Printables
Here are quick links to our free printable teaching resources for learning place value. Read on to discover when and how to teach place value, as well as fun teaching tips and ideas.
What is Place Value?
Place value is defined as the value of a digit based on its position within a number. In kid-friendly words, the value of a digit in a number is determined by the place it occupies. Place value is a fundamental concept in mathematics and plays a significant role in teaching and learning numbers in the classroom. It is an essential concept for understanding how numbers are formed and how they relate to one another.
When to teach Place Value?
Before diving into place value, it’s important for students to have a solid understanding of counting and number recognition. They should be able to identify and write numbers from 0 to 9, and understand the concept of grouping to make 10. Once they have a good grasp of these foundational skills, we can introduce place value to them. In general, place value is introduced in first-grade, however, you can easily adapt resources for younger students to lay down important foundational concepts. For example, kindergarteners who are learning to count and write to 100 can more easily make the jump with our simple place value mats featuring hundreds, tens, and ones.
Place Value Teaching Resources:
Place value is a highly visual concept and we recommend having a variety of hands-on manipulatives available for your students. Whether you purchase or print these materials, having a visual representation of the numbers will not only speed up learning, but it will also help your students retain and recall later on.
Base Ten Blocks: Introduce your child to base ten blocks, which are physical or virtual manipulatives that represent ones, tens, hundreds, and so on. Start by having them build and deconstruct numbers using these blocks. This hands-on approach helps them visualize and understand place value. Printable Base 10 blocks.
Number Tiles: Number tiles are handy to have on hand for a wide variety of tasks at activities. Optionally, you can print our free number cards here and reuse 0-9 digits.
Place Value Games can easily be made with dice, dominos, playing cards, cubes, and more. Keeping your math learning centers well stocked will provide you simple opportunities to teach and learn place value.
How to Teach Place Value
Teaching the concept of place value to students can be a challenging task, but with the right approach, it can be made easier and more effective. Some popular strategies to teach place value include: using manipulatives, and incorporating visual aids like number tiles, place value mats, base ten blocks, cards and more.
Place Value Worksheets
Place Value Worksheets provide a variety of learning experiences that help students in grades 1 through 5 understand place value concepts. These free worksheets and activity pages focus on base ten models, counting, and expanded form. Elementary math is such a fundamental building block for student learning.
- Introduces Base Ten Number System
- Rounding Numbers
- Expanded Form & Standard Form
Place Value Charts
Teaching kids what place values may seem complicated but with the right tools, they can learn fast. When children work with the numbers themselves, they get a better grasp on understanding the concept. Having a place value chart as a learning math tool, regardless of age or abilities, gives students an opportunity to learn the importance of digits, numbers, and decimals using our base-ten number system.
Charts & Worksheets
These charts make the perfect addition to any classroom or homeschool setting. Our colorful charts help students to visualize where digits are placed inside of a number as well as what the value of each digit its.
- Read Numbers
- Write Numbers
- Place Value Millions to Millionths
- Decimals
- Number Value
Make Your Own Place Value Chart: Create a simple place value chart with columns labeled “Ones,” “Tens,” “Hundreds,” and so on, depending on the grade level. Use this chart to represent different numbers and show how digits shift to different places as we move from right to left.
Place Value Games
Free printable place-value games for kids! Learning about place value is tons of fun, with our place value games! These games are designed to help your students understand numbers to the millions and decimal place values to the millionths. With simple adaptations, your students can play these as single-player or multi-player games while having fun learning place value.
Place Value Games & Fun
These games will support and reinforce place-value concepts in an applicable way! Simply grab some beads, cards, or other math manipulatives and get started today!
- Place Value
- Decimals
- Word Form
- Millions
- Large Numbers
- Tens, Hundreds, Ones
- Hands-On Learning
DIY Place Value Games: Make learning fun by incorporating games and activities. For example, you can play “Roll and Build” where your child rolls a dice, writes the number rolled, and builds it with base ten blocks. Or you can have a scavenger hunt where they find objects around the house that represent different place values.
Place Value Activities
Place value activities are designed to help students understand the concept of place value in mathematics. These activities can take many forms, including games, worksheets, charts, and hands-on manipulatives. Create engaging activities by using number tiles, base-ten blocks, ten frames and more!
Activities & Mats
Place Value activities and mats create hands-on learning experiences for your young learners. Students in kindergarten and early elementary school can use these resources to practice reading, writing, and composing/decomposing numbers. Add in manipulatives to create even more engaging activities!
- Read Numbers
- Write Numbers
- Place Value Reference Charts
- Colorful Place Value Learning Centers
By the way, we have a great set of Place Value Charts available providing a wide variety of practice (and letting your students discuss their thoughts), and creating real-life scenarios that place value will be a part of (think money).
Why is Place Value Important?
Place value is essential in everyday math problems in the classroom. For example, when adding or subtracting numbers, students need to understand that each digit in the numbers has a specific place value that determines its contribution to the final answer. Similarly, when multiplying or dividing numbers, place value is used to determine the value of each digit in the answer.
What to Teach Alongside Place Value?
You might be wondering what math concepts you can teach right alongside place value. Here are a few adjacent topics you can explore with students in your classroom.
Comparing and Ordering: Engage your child in activities that involve comparing and ordering numbers. Ask questions like, “Which number is greater: 423 or 365?” and “Arrange these numbers in ascending order: 123, 76, 532, 89.” This helps reinforce the concept of place value and its impact on the magnitude of numbers.
Expanded Form: Break down numbers into their expanded form. For example, in the number 846, you can express it as 800 + 40 + 6. This helps students see the value of each digit in relation to its place.
Real-World Connections: Help your child make connections between place value and real-life situations. For example, when grocery shopping, ask them to identify the value of items based on their prices. Or bring a piece of graph paper and have them keep a running list of the price of each item (carefully documenting each digit in the correct column) to add up at the end of the shopping trip.
Interactive Math Curriculum
Our Interactive Math Curriculum is an engaging, no-prep, print-&-go, and packed full of fun-filled with hands-on printables with key math standards for Kindergarten. Included in this 300+ page bundle is a wide variety of number worksheets, counting worksheets, math games, and interactive activities. Your students will understand critical concepts of math while having a blast learning! This weekly math curriculum is scheduled over a 4-day week and coordinates perfectly with our READ Kindergarten Program.
What’s Next After Place Value
What’s next after place value? Now that you’ve mastered Place Value concepts, it’s time for learning additional math tricks like expanded form and how to round up decimal numbers as well. Here are some ideas for next steps to increase your students’ understanding of math concepts in a progressive way:
- Addition and subtraction of multi-digit numbers
- Multiplication and division of multi-digit numbers
- Decimals
- Fractions
- Percentages
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