Place value3-digit numbers
Name: Date:
Write each number in expanded form.
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2
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5
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Expanded form worksheets
Writing 105 as 100 + 5 says out loud what place value means: each digit is worth its own amount, and the number is those amounts added. These free printable worksheets ask for the expanded form of two-, three- and four-digit numbers.
Kid stuck on one? You don’t just get the sheet.
Expanded form
The answer key prints on a separate page.
What's on this sheet
The zeros are the interesting part. 105 expands to 100 + 5 and not 100 + 0 + 5, because a zero in the tens place means there are no tens to add — and a child who writes the zero in has understood the notation rather than the quantity. Numbers with an interior zero appear on the page deliberately for that reason.
Why this sheet works
Expanded form is also where mental addition comes from. Adding 234 and 152 by breaking both into hundreds, tens and ones is exactly this idea used forwards, and children who are fluent here find column addition much easier to make sense of when it arrives.
How this one works
One question from this sheet, worked through a step at a time.
105 in expanded form
number:105
1 in the hundreds:100
5 in the ones:5
1 in the hundreds:100
5 in the ones:5
100 + 5
- Expanded form is the number taken apart into what each digit is WORTH — so every piece is a digit times its column, never the digit on its own.
- Take each digit in turn: the 1 is 100, the 5 is 5.
- Add those together and you are back to 105: 100 + 5.