Last year you learned all the numbers up to 100. This year we go ten times bigger — all the way to one thousand. Don't worry, the trick is the same: every number is just a few hundreds, a few tens and a few ones glued together.
A library of bags
Imagine ten shelves. On each shelf there are ten bags. Inside every bag are ten marbles.
1 marble = 1
1 bag of marbles = 10
1 shelf of bags = 100
10 shelves = 1,000
That is your road from 0 to 1,000. Every full shelf adds another hundred.
Three-digit numbers
Look at the number 472:
the first digit (4) tells you the number of full shelves — four hundreds (400),
the second digit (7) tells you the leftover bags — seven tens (70),
the third digit (2) tells you the loose marbles — two ones.
Together: 400 + 70 + 2 = 472. We say "four hundred seventy-two".
When zero shows up
A zero is just an empty place. Look at 305:
3 hundreds,
0 tens (no leftover bags),
5 ones.
The zero is important — without it, you would write 35, which is a much smaller number. Always read the digits in order, even when one of them is zero.
