FREE Ordering Large Numbers Cut and Paste Activity

Challenge your students with these ascending and descending order worksheets for large numbers with a focus on place value!

FREE Ordering Large Numbers Cut and Paste Activity

I really thought this would be simple.

We’ve been ordering large numbers for a long time, and he had had no problem when we did it with the task cards. This cut and paste activity though threw him for a loop. It forced him to really stop and think about place value and what it means.

Cut and Paste

We love to do cut and paste activities at our house. Why?

  1. We get to cut and paste. There is something about pulling out scissors and glue that makes any activity more fun.
  2. There isn’t as much writing. Both my boys do very well in math, but they don’t enjoy sitting and writing out answers. Cut and paste activities get them answering questions without the dreaded pencil begin involved.

Those two reasons have gotten me creating more cut and paste activities to add a little more fun to our math time!!

 Ascending and Descending Order worksheets Cut and Paste

I honestly didn’t think this would be such a challenge for my seven-year-old. He is very logical, and while playing our large number place value game or working through our task cards he never once struggled with ordering large numbers or being able to tell me which number was the greatest.

We hit this activity, and a little bit of struggling occurred. I love that for him. Most math comes extremely easy to him, and I love to see him challenged and really having to think.

How this cut and paste works

The concept is very simple. Four numbers are written out on a page with missing digits. The children must cut out the digits on the bottom of the page and glue them into the numbers so that they are in order from largest to smallest or smallest to largest.

It sounds simple, but it isn’t. My son wanted to place all the high numbers in the first number. The problem was that he wasn’t looking at the place value.

FREE Ordering Large Numbers Cut and Paste Activity

In the picture above, my seven -year- old wanted to place the nine, eight, and seven in the first number. If he did that, then there was no way he could make the second number larger than the last number. A seven or eight had to go in the thousands place to make it larger than the last number that has a 7 in the thousands place.

FREE Ordering Large Numbers Cut and Paste Activity

In this picture, we needed to have the smallest number at the top, and the largest at the bottom. Once again, he couldn’t place all the small numbers at the top. To keep the largest number at the bottom, a three had to go in the 100,000 place. If he had placed a 9 there, then that would have been the largest number not the bottom.

These ascending and descending order worksheets force our kiddos to understand place value and to understand what each digit really represents. They are like a puzzle that can only be solved with place value knowledge. 

I hope these cut and pastes challenge your children and really get them thinking about place value when ordering large numbers.

You may also like our Task cards!

FREE Ordering Large Numbers Cut and Paste Activity

Get All 10 Cut and Paste Activites Here

FREE Ordering Large Numbers Cut and Paste Activity

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