Learning Expanded Notation & Place Value Using Chinese Number Characters

This activity is perfect for using in a thematic unit about China, around the time of the Chinese New Year, or just to expose students to a little piece of a new culture!

The 22-page student workbook begins with practice writing the Mandarin Chinese characters for basic numbers. Then students practice using those characters to compare values written with the characters using <, >, or =. Finally, students complete several worksheets (increasing in difficulty) where they must fill in blanks on a table with a column for the number written in standard form using traditional (Arabic) numerals, a column for using expanded form (ex: 5,000 + 300 + 60 + 2 for 5,362), and a column for the Mandarin characters for that number. Because the way numbers are written in the Chinese number system is based on our expanded form, this is a very natural extension, and students love the idea of learning to use the characters!