We have been doing lots of work on place value recently. The children have really enjoyed playing a game called ZAP which involves using their understanding of place value to help them take away.
I thought I would put an overview on here in case you wanted to play it with your child at home. It is a game that you can play with paper or with a calculator.
If your child is in Year 3 they must work with 3 digit numbers.
If your child is in Year 4, they must work with 4 digit numbers.
Give your child a number (make sure all the digits are different) – e.g. 432.
Tell them which number you would like them to ZAP (by zapping a number you are making it go to 0) – e.g. the 3.
Ask your child to write a take away sum to show what they have done (or type it into the calculator if playing the game that way) – e.g. 432 – 30 = 402
An extension is to ask your child to ZAP 2 numbers, e.g. ZAP the 4 and the 3.
They may write different number sentences for this, e.g.
432 – 400 – 30 = 2 or 432 – 430 = 2
Enjoy!
