Math Help Online

The web is full of great resources for supplementing our children's regular math curriculum. For example, one of my kids was struggling a bit with place value. Japanese is different from English in that there are words for ones, tens, hundreds, thousands, AND ten-thousands. Then it goes to ten ten-thousands (10,0000), a hundred ten-thousands (100,0000), a thousand ten-thousands (1000,0000), then another word for a hundred million (1,0000,0000), and so on. Add to that the fact that yen are two orders of magnitude different from dollars in value, and you've got guaranteed place value confusion for kids growing up bilingual (and their parents)!

All that to say why we needed extra math help, and how we found some wonderful math resources online. Sal Khan has hundreds of excellent, concise math video lessons, all for free at the Khan Academy. He begins with 1+1=2 and goes right through linear algebra. He has even branched out and done some videos on science, history, finance, and test prep. Here is his first place value video and links to his others. (Click the video to start it. Click it again to see it in a larger size on youtube.)

• Place value 2
• Place value 3
• Decimal place value
• Decimal place value 2

I'm all for teaching math through fun games like UNO, but sometimes you've just got to crank through a worksheet or two to solidify mastery. Softschools.com has help for several subjects including free math worksheets to cover subjects from pre-K through middle school. I like that you can set the minimum and maximum number of digits. Here are the ones I used for place value.

• Place value worksheet
• Numeral to number word worksheet

These are just two of the many, many resources out there. Please share your favorites in the comments.