Math Story : Introduction to place value

When The Station Master Is Injured

It is a beautiful day. Everybody is sitting under a tree and chit-chatting. Squarho is missing.

Suddenly everybody hears a familiar voice. They look around and are surprised to see Squarho gasping as if he ran fast and came here to inform something. But why? Is something wrong? Let us find out.

Squarho says, “Acirhos have attacked the space car station. They are causing severe damage. There is chaos all around. We need to do something”, says Squarho. Everybody is shocked and immediately leaves to help.

“Oh no! Look, Acirho is attacking the station master, ” says Cirha. Hearing this Triho immediately decides to save him. Others decide to help people and reduce the chaos.

Bam! Boom! Crash! Triho fights the Acirho bravely. He immediately runs to save himself. On the other side, Squarho fights the other Acirhos. Haha! They also run to save themselves. Hurrah!

Sadly, the station master is badly injured. He cannot even move. “I will not be able to manage the station now. What do we do?” says the station master worryingly. “Do not worry station master. We will help you out”, says Uncle Math and the kids. They immediately get to the action.

“What can we do to organize things at the station quickly?” questions shocked Cirha.  But Cirho has some plan. “How about helping the passengers board the space cars ?” suggests Cirho. Uncle Math and others like the idea.

There are two types of space cars at the station. Units space cars with one seat and Tens space cars with 10 seats. Immediately, they ask the passengers to form a line. The passengers start boarding the Units space cars one by one. Nine passengers board and the Units space cars are over.

Cirho asks, “Many passengers are left. What do we do now?” Triho replies, “Let us send them to the Tens space cars. It has more seats.” Quickly the remaining ten passengers board the Tens space cars. All the seats are booked, now the space cars can leave.

34 passengers come to board the next space car. The kids are confused about smoothly boarding so many passengers.“First let us accommodate 30 passengers in the three Tens space cars and send the remaining 4 to Ones space cars,” says Uncle Math. Everybody follows his instructions.

This way kids divide the passengers into groups of tens and ones and help them board Tens and Ones space cars s. The station is free of chaos now, and they happily walk back home.

Way back, Uncle Math explains, “Children, what we did at the space cars station today, we do the same thing with numbers too. How there were Units and Tens space cars s to board the passengers, there is a Units and Tens place to board the numbers. This table is called Place Value. The speciality of Tens place is that it accepts numbers only in groups of 10.”

He continues, “How only nine passengers could sit in the Units space cars, similarly only numbers up to 9 can sit in the Units Place. Whenever a number is greater than 9, we send it to the Tens place, just like we sent the extra passengers to the Tens space cars at the station.

“But, when the number is too big, we first fill the Tens place by grouping the numbers in ten and then fill the Units place. Just like boarding a large number of passengers,” adds Uncle Math.

“The Place Value Table is so cool! It will also help us write numbers faster. I am going to use it from now,” says happy Squarho. Everybody agrees, and they head back home.  It was a  productive day indeed.

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We Learnt That…

1. Place Value Table helps us understand and write the numbers faster.
2. To write two-digit numbers, we use the Tens and Ones place in the Place Value Table.
3. Only numbers up to 9 are written in Ones Place.
4. Numbers greater than 9, are written using Tens Place. 
5. We do not need money to help others, we need a heart and a will.

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Let’s Discuss

1. Who was injured? Why?
2. How did we board the passengers in the space cars?
3. What is Place Value? Explain. 
4. When we heard about the chaos at the station, we immediately went to help the people. Have you helped people in need? How?

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• Place Value