What if there was a symbol for every number from 1 to 100. What if there were 900 more symbols to represent numbers from 101 to 1000? Would that be too many symbols to remember?

Instead, we learn 1 through 9 and zero, placing them in a base-10 place value system. Get to know how it works with young Rob and Numberock in a pear orchard, on an epic bike ride, and in class. The Place Value Song was written by Numberock founder, math teacher, and songwriter Benjamin Hehn.

From the video notes:

Learning about Place Value helps us understand the meaning of each digit in a multi-digit number. Being able to bundle up 10 ones, because of the luxury of a tens place, allows us to express numbers like 10 and above efficiently without having to create a new digit for each number. Simply stated, place value helps us make sense of increasingly large (and small) numbers while saving time and energy communicating these values to one another.

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Related musical math videos on this site include Flocabulary’s Types of Triangles, Schoolhouse Rock’s Counting by Fives and The Four-Legged Zoo, and Feist’s 1234 on Sesame Street.

There are more math videos, too.