Teach children about large numbers by having them practice labeling numbers. Give children a large number and ask them to write out how to say the number. For example, a child would write: "one million, three-hundred and forty-five thousand, two-hundred and thirty" for the number 1,345,230. Place the words "million," "thousand" and "hundred" on the wall, separated by commas. Give children a large number and have them cut out the digits and place them under the appropriate words. Have them practice saying the number.
Provide children with visuals of what a certain number looks like. Choose small items such as paper clips or pennies to represent numbers in the thousands. The Mega Penny Project by Kokogiak Media (kokogiak.com) is a website that shows pictures of what large numbers of pennies look like. Teachers can share pictures of up to one quintillion pennies with their students. Another website sponsored by Page Tutor (pagetutor.com/trillion) can be used to show students what one trillion dollars looks like using $100 bills.
Matching activities can help children practice identifying large numbers. Create a simple memory game by writing numbers in both standard form and word form on index cards. Place the cards face down and have the children make matches by finding cards that contain the numbers in both forms. Use an interactive whiteboard to create a simple game where children take turns dragging numbers in standard form next to their word form.
Math Cats (mathcats.com) provides an online activity called "Can You Say Really Big Numbers?" Students enter a really big number of their choice into the box and are prompted to say the number out loud, and then click a box to see the number written out. They are then prompted to say it again to see if they were correct the first time. FunBrain's Cookie Dough game (funbrain.com/numwords) offers children two options of play. In the first option, children see a number and are asked to spell the words that make the number. The second method gives children a number in word form and asks them to write it in standard form.