Chapter 9 — House of Hundreds - II

Chapter 9 of the Class 3 Maths NCERT textbook (Maths Mela), "House of Hundreds - II", teaches children to read, write, represent, and explore three-digit numbers up to 1000 through activities like placing numbers on a number line, completing skip-counting patterns, solving number puzzles, playing a Tambola grid game, and discovering special number patterns such as palindromes, twin digits, and an ancient Indian system of word numerals called Bhutasankhya.

• Three-Digit Numbers and Place Value — Children learn to represent numbers like 832, 947, and 504 using hundreds, tens, and ones tiles. They also explore different ways to make the same number, for example 368 can be written as 300 + 60 + 8, or as 68 more than 300, or as 32 less than 400.
• Number Line and Neighbouring Numbers — The chapter asks children to locate numbers such as 530, 628, and 703 on a number line and to find the neighbouring hundreds, fifties, and tens for any given number. A crane puzzle extends this by asking how many steps are needed to move from one number to another.
• Skip Counting Patterns — Children complete number patterns by skipping in steps of 10, 15, 25, 30, and 100, filling in missing boxes in sequences that go up toward 1000. This builds an intuitive sense of how numbers grow in equal jumps.
• Special Number Patterns and Bhutasankhya — A section called The Number Detective introduces patterns: consecutive-digit numbers like 123 and 345, palindrome numbers like 353 and 868 that read the same forwards and backwards, twin-digit numbers like 11 and 22, and triplet-digit numbers like 111 and 222. The chapter also introduces Bhutasankhya, an ancient Indian tradition of representing numbers using everyday words such as Moon for 1 and Twins for 2.

1. 01Children represent three-digit numbers up to 1000 using hundreds, tens, and ones tiles drawn in a notebook.
2. 02A Tambola (bingo-style) game asks children to fill a grid with numbers between 570 and 630 and strike out numbers matching given clues.
3. 03Number line activities cover placing numbers in the range 500 to 900 and calculating how many steps a crane needs to reach its food.
4. 04Skip-counting sequences use varying step sizes including 10, 15, 25, 30, and 100, reaching all the way to 1000.
5. 05Children find palindrome numbers (same forwards and backwards, e.g. 353, 868), twin-digit numbers (11, 22, 33), and triplet-digit numbers (111, 222, 333).
6. 06The concept of Bhutasankhya (word numerals) shows how ancient Indians expressed numbers using words for familiar objects such as Moon, Twins, and directions.
7. 07A paper-slips activity asks children to make numbers like 231 and 123 using six slips each labelled 100, 10, or 1, and to find the largest and smallest numbers possible.