Tens and Ones Bean Sticks Activities

Tens and Ones Bean Sticks Activities

Small-group or whole-class activities with Base-10 materials are both meaningful and essential to understanding the place value system.  Here are some great activities you can do with your students in order from easiest to most difficult:

What’s My Number?

The teacher using the bean sticks to create a number on the document camera or at a small group.  Students identify the number either verbally or by writing it down (on paper or a white board).

Make My Number

The teacher or leader calls out a number or chooses a number card.  Students use their bean sticks and beans to create the number.  The teacher can ask follow-up questions, such as, “How many ones do you have?” and “How many tens are there?”

Count by Tens

Students practice counting by tens while touching or putting their bean sticks down on the table.  This activity combines auditory and kinesthetic components to reach all types of learners.

One More, One Less, Ten More, Ten Less

Using bean sticks and beans is an excellent way to practice one more/less and ten more/less, because students physically add or subtract one bean or one bean stick and then recalculate their number.  It’s a great idea to provide students with a hundreds chart while completing this activity so that they can see 42 is ten more than 32 both on the hundreds chart as well as with their bean sticks.

Addition Without Regrouping

Show two numbers and have students model each using tens and ones.  Then, have them combine ones and tens to create the new number.  Be sure to point out that the number in the ones must add up to 9 or less, otherwise they will need to regroup (see Trade It In below).

Trade It In

One of the hardest concepts for young math students to learn is regrouping.  Using bean sticks is an excellent way to practice regrouping skills.  You can explain to students that you are “allowed” to have 9 individual beans, but as soon as there are 10, you have to trade them in for a bean stick.  For example, if a student is adding 38 plus 13, the 11 ones must be regrouped – 10 of them get traded in for a bean stick and the other 1 stays as a single bean.  You may want to call them something fun like “ants” and “ants on a log” to make it easy to remember.

You can also use bean sticks for subtraction.  Start by having students create a number of your choosing, and then telling them how many to take away.  When you teach regrouping, remind students that they will need to trade in their ten “ants on a log” for 10 single ants before they subtract their ones.  We made a great place value pack that contains even more ideas and worksheets.  Click here to check it out!

There are many other activities you can do with tens and ones bean sticks, such as comparing numbers, ordering numbers, keeping track of days of school, etc.

Do you want to know how to make these tens and ones bean sticks?  Click here.