Teaching Place Value in Kindergarten

When I first started teaching, kindergarten math was all about counting to twenty, number recognition to ten and maybe making patterns. Times have changed, CCSS has taken over and our kindergartners are becoming little mathematicians. Growing up I hated math. I couldn't remember orders of operation, formulas and algebra might has well have been cave man writing.

At some point in my teaching career, I began to understand the foundations of math. I began to enjoy teaching it and I learned to embrace it and love it. Now as a kindergarten teacher, I know how important it truly is for my students to really understand number concepts. It isn't just memorizing a bunch of facts. They need to KNOW all about each number.

I truly love watching my students solve math problems, especially when I ask them to show me how they arrived at their answer. Last week I had asked a student to explain how she arrived at her answer. We were working on numbers before and after "I used my brain and checked the number line" . Brilliant!!!. I watched as she would say the number sequence ____, 14, 15 then count back to write the missing number, then check the number line just to make sure.

Lately, we've been working with ten frames, tally marks and are starting to move into the teen numbers using place value rods and cubes. I started out just wanting a few work mats and some matching cards for my students to use during Math Work Stations. Thus, a monster was created. What was going to be a few simple pages turned into 200+ pages. My students will have a ton of practice to master these concepts. I made each separate pack, then also created a bundle. You can find each set by clicking my pictures below.