Place Value Learning Guides
Short, friendly guides for parents and teachers who want to help a child understand how numbers are really built — not just memorise them. Each guide uses the same worked examples, 139 and 1,394, so ideas build on each other.
What is place value?
Why the 3 in 139 means 30, and how the same digit can be worth 3, 30, 300 or 3,000.
Read the guide →Hundreds, tens and ones
What each place is worth, worked examples like 731 and 508, and how to “trade up” ten for one.
Read the guide →Understanding thousands
Why 10 hundreds make 1 thousand, reading 1,234, and the tricky zeros in 1,005 and 2,040.
Read the guide →Expanded form
Breaking numbers apart: 139 = 100 + 30 + 9 and 1,394 = 1,000 + 300 + 90 + 4.
Read the guide →For grown-ups
Looking for something to do together? The guide for parents has five quick place value games for home. Teaching a class? See Place Value Quest in the classroom. Short answers to common questions are on the FAQ page.
Play the free place value game →
Telling the time guides
Guides for Digi’s second game, Digi’s Time Quest. They use one worked example throughout — 3:45, quarter to four — and the time ladder from seconds to seasons.
How to tell the time
What the hour and minute hands mean, o’clock and half past, and the 3:45 mistake.
Read the guide →Quarter past and quarter to
Why 3:15 is quarter past 3 but 3:45 is quarter to 4.
Read the guide →Elapsed time
How long did it take? The jump-to-the-o’clock method, step by step.
Read the guide →Seasons
Three months in each season, their order — and the real reason seasons happen.
Read the guide →