Part of the materials we use to learn numbers (how they read out and how they are represented) is through the decimal system golden bead materials.  The girls use the checkerboard material just about every time they do math (the colorful bead sets).  We use the golden beads specifically to represent thousands, hundreds, tens and ones.  And we focus on this…..all the material being the same color makes it easy to do so.  The Materials are represented in a cube (thousands) in hundred squares and 10 bars and single ones.  This makes it simple to see how many hundreds make up a thousand, and how many tens make up a hundred and break it down from there.  The materials range from beads to number tiles…..the abacus is used during explanation often and the skip counting chains as well as the Teen and Tens board.