Marshmallows

I did this last year with my second graders but only to the hundreds. This year, teaching fourth grade, I went to the hundred millions!!!
Check out last year's post here.

We spent a while talking about NOT eating anything and using these as math tools, not food.

The lesson is pretty simple and SO MUCH FUN.
What you need:
Marshmallows
Tooth picks
Fruitloops
Construction paper

I cut out strips of construction paper to put the marshmallows on and I had my students put the commas between every group of 3 marshmallows.

Then we talked about what each marshmallow represented (ones, tens, hundreds, thousands, ten thousands, hundred thousands, millions, ten millions, hundred millions)

Each pair of two got one strip of construction paper, 9 marshmallows, a handful of fruit loops, and 9 tooth picks to put inside the marshmallows. They also got a whiteboard and a whiteboard marker.
I stood up at the front of the room and said the number and one person had to write it down on the whiteboard. Then they both had to use the fruitloops to show me that number.

We practiced with some easy ones first. I had them show me 1,420 and 5,303.
Then we moved up to the harder, more complex numbers.
The most challenging was 521,000,312. They kept showing me 521,312,000. The only difference is saying the word THOUSAND.

I think it was helpful for those kiddos who need to hear it, see it, touch it.
Definitely it was helpful to get the students excited about math!
Who doesn't love touching squishy marshmallows??