Multiplication with Packed Blocks

One of the strengths of the Digi-Block program is that students can use the packed blocks to do very large multiplication problems without having to know the algorithm. By practicing many multiplication problems this way, they gain confidence in being able to perform multiplication, and the transition to the formal algorithm becomes much easier.

	Let’s start with the problem 54 * 3. The first step is to build 3 groups of 54 (you could also build 54 groups of 3).
	Now, we combine the blocks together and organize them.
	At this point, we pack as much as possible so that we can find the number of blocks that we have.
	Now we can set the digits to find that we have 162.