Learning to read big numbers has never been so much fun! We are excited to present this new wooden material, Infinity Street Hierarchy. Infinity Street will allow children to practice reading large numbers, and develop a thorough understanding of place value. This unique wooden material is introduced through a captivating story that we will share with you below.
Materials
- 8 gradually increasing yellow wooden houses with 3 notches representing categories (unit, ten, hundred)
- 8 wooden mailboxes labeled with hierarchies (simple, hundred, thousand, million, billion, trillion, quadrillion, quintillion, sextillion)
- a set of colored bead bars (not included, checkerboard bead bars are ideal)
- prepared slips (not included, you or children may write them)
How to use the material
Prior to the presentation, you will need a box with colored beads, and prepared slips with large numbers (e.g.: 465,345,785,346,125,332,809). Children should have at least experience with the Stamp Game so that they are familiar with the color coding of the categories (unit/green, ten/blue, hundred/red). To get children excited about the presentation, children are introduced to a story that can begin like this:
STORY
Who lives on a street? is there a lot of houses in your street? There are mailboxes as well. Sometimes we see numbers on mailboxes, and some mailboxes have names on them!
Well, my friends, I know a very special street on this planet. This street is so special, when you look westward, it never ends! It’s an infinite street, so we call it the Infinity Street. Another peculiar thing about the houses is that as you look from East to West, they get bigger, and bigger, and bigger, infinitely bigger! And each house hosts a family.
You see their mailboxes? That is where you can read the family’s names. But there’s one family of which we never pronounce the name; it’s the first house looking East. They tend to be shy, so we just don’t mention their name, and it’s alright.
And how many family members are they in your family? Well, on the Infinity Street, each family is composed of 3 members named unit, ten, and hundred. Yes, each family! But, each member can be attributed to a different number. That will depend on you what number you give them. Ah! And on this very special street, naturally, there are mailboxes in front of each house. The name of each family is written on the mailboxes. Here we have the simple family that we won’t pronounce again, then we have the thousand family, the million family, the billion family, the trillion family, the quadrillion family, the quintillion family, and the sextillion family! Of course, we could go on, but that’s all we can see from here.
SETTING
At this point, you can demonstrate to children how to designate a number to each member (green unit, blue ten, red hundred) using the prepared slips. You can start with a small number with which children are likely familiar like 632, 825*.
*It could be necessary to review how to read expanded numbers, and show how to read them in a standard manner. Ex: 825 is 8 hundred, 2 tens, and 5 units. We can also read it: 8 hundred 25.
To build the example above, you would place the colored beads 5, 2, 8, 2, 3, 6 from right to left. You would demonstrate how to read the numbers of each member from left to right (5 hundred 24). Pause when reaching a mailbox to read the name of the hierarchy (thousand). This example would say: “6 hundred, 32 thousand, 8 hundred 25.” You must remind the child that we don’t pronounce the simple family. If it becomes an issue, you can remove the “simple” mailbox after presentation. The purpose is to provide children with a consistent hierachical pattern. Find a step-by-step example of how children should proceed below.
Step 1
First, children layout the work on a large table or a rug. The smallest house goes to the right; the houses should increase in size as they are place from right to left. Children place the mailboxes underneath each respective house, preferably ensuring that the comma is placed between two houses to show the separation between each hierarchy. Children select prepared slips with which they will work. They can also make up their own large number. In our example below, we used: 2, 342, 891, 567, 321, 825.
Step 2
Children refer to the prepared slip to place the first bead bars in the “simple” house. A 5-bar goes in the green unit notch, a 2-bar goes in the blue ten botch, and an 8-bar in the red hundred notch. They continue to do so until they have placed all the beads bars.
Step 3
Children can now read aloud the large number: 2 quadrillion, 3 hundred 42 trillion, 8 hundred 91 billion, 5 hundred 67 million, 3 hundred 21 thousand, 8 hundred 25.
After a few independent practices, you will notice a burst of confidence emanating from children! They will want to build larger numbers, and research more of the hierarchy, which goes to infinity. Who knows, they might want to check out duotrigintillion or googleplex!
