Sparkle Math

Sparkle's math lesson had her converting money amounts from dollars to dimes and pennies. She could do a few with smaller numbers, but when the numbers got larger, she was stumped, so we got out the manipulatives. The top row is 5109 in base 10 blocks representing 5109 pennies. I don't actually have 5 thousand cubes. I only have 3 thousand cubes. However, I have enough hundred flats to make up the extra thousands, with some more flats to spare. If you look closely on the far left, you can see a unit cube perched on a penny. Then Sparkle converted every 10 pennies to a dime, to build the middle row, 510. On the far left is a unit cube on a dime. Finally, Sparkle converted every 10 dimes to a dollar, building the bottom row, 51. On the far left is a unit cube on a dollar.