How to Teach Decimal Points to Children

There are many different analogies to teaching decimal points to children that are having trouble understanding the concept. The children most commonly use rules that work a fraction at a time and do not realize that there are rules that can be applied to all. I think a good way to make them understand would be to explain to them that when trying to figure out which one is smaller or bigger on a decimal number, you could tell them that the one with more numbers is smaller.

For example: 6.454 is smaller than 6.7 because it has more digits. Researchers have found that there are two “rules” to help compare decimal places as well. One example the author give is that a child could just write out the units as thousands, hundreds, tens, ones, tenths, hundredths thousandth knowing that the decimal lies on the ones place. I am a very visual person and I feel that would be helpful when trying to figure out the place value of that number. The second way that was represented was by using base-ten-blocks. Using the blocks you can identify six-tenths of 100 by looking at the ten-by-ten-by-ten cube. This way is also very visual, I think all these ways are very helpful as long as the child understands the concept to the fullest of their ability before moving on to the next step.