Place Value Activities with Graph Paper

Do some fun and effective hands-on place value activities with graph paper!

Why buy expensive math manipulatives when you can do so many things with supplies you already have? We love learning math with LEGO bricks, dice, playing cards, and other things from around the house.

These math activities have the added benefit of offering scissor practice too. I’m a firm believer that kids today need more practice cutting, gluing, tying knots, building things, working with clay, and really anything that increases hand strength (as opposed to using one finger to scroll on a screen).

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I would recommend these activities for kids ages 6 – 9, or grades 1 – 3.

Supplies Needed:

• Graph Paper – I bought this Mr. Pen graph paper with 4 squares per inch. It’s great!
• Construction paper – the color contrast is helpful with the white graph paper
• Scissors
• Markers

With graph paper, you can easily cut out 100’s, 10’s, and 1’s! Give kids a few minutes to try cutting out these different sizes before moving on to the activities.

In our base 10 system, each place to the left is 10 times more. Graph paper helps with understanding that.

If you’re working with younger kids or kids that need support with fine motor skills, you may want to order the 2 x 2 graph paper instead. It has 2 squares per inch, so the squares are larger and easier to cut out.

Activity 1: Expanded Notation

With graph paper, you can actually show a number in expanded notation!

Actually, what I have written on the yellow page is grouping notation, which I prefer, but it works the same either way. Take a number like 372 and show that you have 3 hundreds, 7 tens, and 2 ones.

Expanded notation would be 300 + 70 + 2.

Is this a difficult concept? Not really. But it can be very helpful for kids to see a visual representation of what the hundreds, tens, and ones places represent.

Activity #2: Multiplying by 10 and by 100

It’s easy for kids to memorize the fact that multiplying by 10 is just adding a 0 to the number. But why does that work? This activity will allow them to see what’s going on when you multiply a number by 10 or by 100.

Choose a single digit number and represent that number with ones.

Then build that number multiplied by 10, and then 100. So simple and so clear when you can see it!

Activity #3: How much is 1,000?

One sheet of the 4 x 4 graph paper has enough squares to show 1,000!

We found that grouping the squares into hundreds made it easy to count to 1,000.

One thousand is a LOT!

Need more place value activities?

Here’s a collection of Hands-On Place Value Activities with LEGO bricks, playing cards, post it notes, and more.