Quick and Easy Place Value Activity for Decimals

We have been working on decimal numbers to the thousandths place for the past several days. About half the class is rocking it, the other half, not so much. Here is a quick and easy activity you can do for part of your 15 minutes/4x a week to help build understanding of those decimal numbers.

For starters we talk about making the following associations:
Ones place = dollars
Tenths place = dimes
Hundredths place = pennies

Grab a bunch of pennies and dimes. Make sure you have more than 10 of each, so that your child can see that connection when we have more than 10 of something that "belongs" in one place. Place out random amounts of each coin. Count the money and then (this is the powerful part) WRITE the decimal number.

For example,
three dimes and 7 pennies = .37 or 0.37
fifteen dimes and no pennies = 1.5 or 1.50

I find that the more students can visualize or understand pennies as hundredths and dimes and tenths, the better they do with decimal numbers in general.

Have fun!