Place Value Pirates

What your child learns

Place value is the idea that the 4 in 46 means four tens, not four. It's the base for adding big numbers and reading prices, and it's where a lot of kids quietly get lost. Every coin stack in the game is drawn as ten real coins you can count.

• Teen numbers as one ten and some ones (Kindergarten to Grade 1, K.NBT.A.1)
• Tens and ones in two-digit numbers (Grade 1, 1.NBT.B.2)
• Hundreds, tens and ones, including tricky zeros like 406 (Grade 2, 2.NBT.A.1)
• Reading numbers from treasure, from number words and from expanded form like 300 + 40 + 6 (Grade 2, 2.NBT.A.3)
• Comparing numbers and picking <, = or > (Grades 1 to 2, 1.NBT.B.3 and 2.NBT.A.4)
• Regrouping: 10 ones make a ten, 10 tens make a hundred
• Rounding to the nearest 10 or 100 on a number line (Grade 3, 3.NBT.A.1)

How it works

Tap Play and the first chest is open. Each question is read aloud, and the speaker button repeats it. To build a number, your child taps the piles of gold bars, stacks and coins to drop them in the chest, taps an item in the chest to take it back out, then taps Load it! Each place holds at most 9, so trying to add a tenth coin gets a friendly reminder that 10 coins make a stack.

Other islands ask different questions about the same treasure: what number is in this chest, which chest has more, which sign goes between two numbers, and which island a number is closer to when you round. A voyage is 6 chests and takes about three minutes.

The eight islands

Levels and how it adapts

Each island gets harder in small steps. Numbers grow, zeros show up in the middle, the treasure gets mixed up instead of sorted, and number words and expanded form appear. Three right answers in a row move your child up a step. The game also tracks which kinds of numbers are tricky, like a zero in the tens place, and brings those back more often.

A wrong answer gets a reason, not just a buzz. If your child builds 64 instead of 46, the column that's off is marked and Kiki says how many tens the number needs. On the rounding questions, dotted arcs show how far the number is from each island. After a second miss, Kiki shows the answer, filling the chest or counting the treasure up by hundreds, tens and ones, and explains it. The same kind of question comes back two chests later, and the next ones get a step easier. There's no timer and no way to lose.

Earn 2 stars on an island to open the next. The ages picker on the title screen sets the start: ages 6 to 8 begin at Tenpenny Isle with four islands open, and ages 8 to 11 begin at Hundred Harbor.

Islands, flags and the daily hunt

Every voyage adds a new island to your child's sea map (there are 24 to find), and every second voyage earns a new flag for the ship. Stickers for the shared Sticker Book come from the first voyage, a first perfect voyage, some new islands and the daily challenge. The Today button starts the daily treasure hunt: 8 chests, the same for everyone that day, matched to the age setting, with a streak counter for days in a row.

Tips for grown-ups

• Bundle 10: count out 34 pieces of dry pasta, then make bundles of 10. How many bundles? How many left over?
• Go on a number hunt: read house numbers, prices or page numbers together and ask, "How many tens? How many hundreds?"
• Write 47 and 74 and ask which is more. Talk about why the tens matter most.

Privacy and safety

No ads, no accounts, no chat and no leaderboards. We don't use analytics or tracking on our learning games, and nothing is sent anywhere. Progress is saved only on your device. It's free in the browser on a phone, tablet or computer.

Questions