Place Value Worksheets

What is place value?

Place value means a digit is worth a different amount depending on where it sits. The 5 in 352 sits in the tens place, so it stands for 50; the same 5 in 523 stands for 500. Every number is built from ones, tens, hundreds and thousands, and reading those places is the skill.

That is why 91 beats 19 even though both use a 9 and a 1, and why the zero in 407 cannot be dropped: it holds the tens place open so the 4 keeps meaning 400. Once a child can say what each digit is worth, column addition, regrouping and mental math all start to make sense.

How do you teach place value step by step?

Start concrete: bundles of ten sticks and base ten blocks, where a ten is something you can hold. Move to the place value chart, then expanded form (352 = 300 + 50 + 2), then number words. Finish with the skills that use it: 10 more and 10 less, comparing digit by digit, and rounding.

The 80 sheets on this page follow exactly that ladder, so you can hand a five year old the bundle-counting pages and a third grader the four-digit rounding table from the same set. Every sheet states its skill in the footer, and no two sheets repeat the same exercise.

Print at 100% (choose "actual size" in the print dialog) on US Letter or A4 paper. When the places are solid, the natural next steps are comparing numbers worksheets for ordering practice, the number charts for hundred-chart work, and column practice in the addition worksheets. Multi-digit multiplication, long division and even fractions all lean on the places these pages build.