5 Place Value Books to Add to Your Guided Math Lessons

Teaching place value in first grade or second grade? Try adding some of these picture books to your place value lessons! Using picture books is one of the best ways to engage your students and make place value connections.

While there are many excellent place value books, here is a list of my top 5 favorite books for you to read!

Earth Day – Hooray! by Stuart J. Murphy

I absolutely love the book Earth Day – Hooray! In this math story, the students in the Save-the-Planet Club are cleaning up the cans in a park for their Earth Day celebration. They want to make the park extra beautiful by planting a few flowers. The students collect aluminum cans to take to the recycling center to make money, and they decide to get their whole school involved!

The students sort and count the cans by placing 10 cans in each small bag. Then, when they have 10 small bags, they put them all into one big bag that holds 100 cans! This book really makes place value concrete for students, which is one of the reasons I love it so much!

*All books shared in this post use Amazon affiliate links. This is no extra cost to you, but if you purchase from my link I receive a small commission that helps keep Simply Creative Teaching up and running!*

Penguin Place Value by Kathleen L. Stone

Penguin Place Value is such a cute introduction to place value! In this story, the penguins are trying to keep track of the fish they catch. They must use place value to know how many fish they’ve caught. If you need to go back to the basics with place value, this would be a great book to read! As a bonus, there’s a sequel called More Penguin Place Value: Hundreds, Tens, and Ones.

Place Value by David Adler

This book, Place Value, explains how just like words are made up of letters, we write numbers with digits. Just like TOP and POT make different words, the numbers 216 and 621 have very different values! This book teaches how the order of the digits is very important!

The helpful comparisons in this book are simple and direct and would be a great addition to your place value lessons. Plus, these adorable monkeys own a banana cafe which makes it super cute and engaging!

Zero the Hero by Joan Holub and Tom Lichtenheld

Zero the Hero is an absolutely adorable book! The main character, Zero, is positive that he’s worth a lot, and that he’s a hero! However, the other numbers think he’s useless, so Zero runs away. It isn’t until they encounter a few story problems that the other numbers realize they need him!

Sir Cumference and All the King’s Tens by Cindy Neuschwander

In this math adventure, Sir Cumference and Lady Di are planning a birthday party for the king, but they have a huge crowd of guests! They must devise a plan to count all the guests so they know how many lunches and dinners to prepare. That’s when they discover the importance of place value!

Place Value Practice Activities

You’ve read the books. You’ve taught the mini-lessons. Now it’s time to engage in some meaningful practice activities, right?! Look no further! These no-prep place value games are so easy to add to your math centers. Plus, there’s no cutting or laminating required for you!

More Than Books: Free Differentiated Math Activities

Would you love some free math activities for your first or second grade classroom? I’ve put together a completely FREE Differentiated Math Toolkit filled with independent math practice activities and differentiated math centers to try! 

Find more book recommendations:

• 20 Books for Teaching Cause & Effect
• My Favorite Versions of the Three Little Pigs: The Ultimate List