Dear Nancy,
I have been working with my son on level B. He is having difficulty with place value when adding numbers like 69+30. He tries to add the 6, 3, and 9 together. He was getting the hang of it yesterday when he was using the 100 chart with the 100+ chart in his workbook. On his own he did come up with jumping by 10s but,?? He likes it better than the abacus. Which surprises me because he is a visual/kinesthetic learner. However I am worried that I am not teaching him correctly and that he is going to rely on counting instead of visually manipulating the numbers. He is good at using the strategies when adding ones but seeing the numbers in a line he wants to add them all together and does not get the concept of tens cannot be added with the ones. Am I making sense? We do play the card games every Friday rather than lessons. He even plays games with his sister who is in level C. He loves corners and is doing well when adding the numbers vertically but still I feel I am failing in teaching him place value and am afraid to move on to the next lesson without him grasping the concept better. Any suggestions?? We have used the popsicle sticks, a number flip chart, the abacus, the number chart, the number tiles and placing them on top of each other. Help? What else can I do?
Thank you,
Jennifer

Dear Jennifer,
Thanks for explaining your situation so clearly. It really helps me and others who are reading the post to understand your frustration. First of all, don't be so hard on yourself. Place value is one of the hardest concepts for children to grasp since it is so abstract. They need many, many experiences with the quantities before they grasp the concept fully. The best plan is to have him enter the numbers on the abacus every time until he can see it in his head. We often try to take it away too soon and move on to abstract thinking, but remember he is not at that stage of thinking yet.

Also, are you using the math way of counting? If you say 6-ten, nine plus 3-ten it should help him to see that 6-ten and 3-ten need to be added. Also, there can be some confusion with this problem only since 3-ten and 6-ten make 9-ten, which is the same number as the ones, which may be the reason for the confusion. Perhaps he does get it, but this extra 9 is the problem. What I would recommend is that you have him enter the numbers on the abacus to "check" his work, much like you would use a calculator to check your own adding and subtracting if checking over your checkbook. Let him see the numbers over and over to establish the quantities clearly in his mind.

Also, there are several good games that help with this. One is called Station Game N37, where you use the abacus, place value cards, and base ten cards. By seeing the same quantity three different ways it really helps cement the value. Another good game is N38 Can You find. Try playing some games for a week and then going back to the lesson. You are right in that you want to be sure he really gets this concept, but remember he is just in first grade. It will come. It takes many pleasant experiences to lock it into his long term memory. That is why games help so much.
Nancy