Decimal Fractions - Introduction - Lego Style!

Legoboy figured out that if you're ok with "girly" pink LEGOs, you could easily make this material entirely yourself!

The day I presented the introduction to him, I needed a crown for the unit bead. He was more than happy to oblige! This crown came from the Kingdoms Lego sets.

The Unit is the KING of the decimal system.
Everything centers around him.
I bet he's a toddler ;) hehehe

Materials for this work: 

• Decimal Fraction board - printable onto a couple sheets of cardstock and attached - or both mounted onto posterboard. Montessori Homeschooling has it for free, or it is available other places for free or purchase. (I recommend this set of 2 files from this site; ask me about the other files) - EASY
• decimal colored beads - pull them from the long division work (racks and tubes; test tubes) - just a few as these are not used often - EASY
• 1 cm cubes in blue, red, green, light blue, light pink, and light green - this is where the Legos come in! Use the 1x1 bricks! EASY if Legos; medium difficulty if needing to paint/stain them. Just buy a bunch to toss into a plastic bag with some paint or stain - shake around - scoop out with a tiny wire colander or even just a fork - lay out on wax paper to dry. ;) 
• white number cards for the decimal numbers, that when placed on the board the 0 fits in the units place; the decimal point is on the line; the next digit is in the tenths column and so on, with each digit in its appropriate column. The font colored according to its category. MEDIUM difficulty - if you buy the board and the numbers together you're set; otherwise, perhaps someone could develop an easy download for the board AND the numbers so they coordinate!
• You will also need the gray number cards from the Bank Game (elementary Bank Game - the one with only cards) - EASY
• For one part of the introduction you'll want the white decimal cards from the Bank Game as well - EASY
• and finally several black hole punches to use as decimal points - EASY
• There is one candelabra that could be made on the spot - a wonderful art extension for the children to then re-create on their own, because yours won't be all pretty and fancy! (wink-wink, hint-hint - do not make it pretty and fancy) - EASY-MEDIUM
• For later work, you will want some skittles - pull from the stamp game or the long division work - or draw a skittle on a piece of paper! EASY!

So you see - once you get to this work, the only new material is the board itself, a few black hole punches, its own number cards, and the cubes. None of these are tricky to make!