concept of tens and units, etc.

[nannyme]

I am thinking of getting some cuisinere rods (sp) to help with this but does anybody else have any bright ideas?

Did consider getting away from using the term units by asking my 6 year old to think of something small like a blueberry for units, a strawberry for tens, orange for hundreds...

We could then actually use these as physical representations on the kitchen table when we do arithmetic. Is this confusing the issue?

Units were an abstract thing tonight it would seem.

I haven't read the rest of this thread, but I bought my son these just as a toy (because they were cheap!!) and he loves playing with them and is really getting the hang of the units and tens thing.

I haven't read all the thread but I would advise against your idea of using strawberries etc. you need something that makes clear the reality - and the answer to that is "piles". turning sums into questions about piles makes everything clear. ie: I have a 134 beads - how many hundreds are there? how many piles of a hundred can i make? (answer - 1 ) with what's left how many tens can I make? how many piles of ten? (3) and how many piles of 1? and you can start getting more complex - you can talk about the fact that you can make 13 piles of 10 - or 1 pile of a hundred and 3 of ten.

piles are great for multiplication and division. if i make 10 piles with 2 in each pile how many have i got? ok what's 10 x 2?

obviously you can do this just verbally or you can get out the beads/buttons/raisin wheats.

I find that in explaining maths to kids you can go a awful long way with piles. as it were.