Practicing our number system with a tangible model is an invaluable way for learners to internalize base 10.  I remember how valuable base 10 blocks were for me in second and third grade.  A few years ago someone pointed out that toothpicks work great as a base ten manipulative and I’ve been using them regularly in my math tutoring.  Searching around just now to see if anyone else had blogged about this idea, I found this great blog post about why pop blocks that can be broken apart work better than base 10 blocks as a manipulative for learners who are still mastering base 10.

Here’s how you can do it with toothpicks.

Get about 500 toothpicks for each student who will be using them at one time.  Get some of the tiny hair rubber bands and some larger rubber bands. 

Ask learners to help you construct the base 10 toothpick set by making some bundles of 10.  Even if you already have bundles made by previous students, it’s great to start learners off with these by letting them construct at least some bundles of their own.

When hundreds are needed, they can be created by bundling 10 of the 10-bundles together with a bigger rubber band.

As with the pop blocks, a great thing about these is that they can be physically taken apart to aid in modeling subtraction and division, or to easily create numbers close to 10 or close to 100.

Plus, they fit in my cute manipulatives bag!