The tool opens to show an empty board and a dock. The dock contains cards for the different place values from millions (M) to thousandths (th). You can drag cards out of the dock and onto the board.

By default, all the cards show “1”. You can adjust this using the arrow buttons under a given card. For example, to make a card saying “500” click the up-arrow under the hundreds (H) card until the card in the dock reads “5”. Then you can drag it onto the board.

To make a number with a digit in more than one place value: To make “111” (for example), drag one Hundred card, one Tens card and one Ones card onto the board so that they are on top of each other. A handle appears to the left of this stack of cards: use this if you want to drag “111” around the board. Dragging on another part of the stack of cards drags 111 apart, thus demonstrating partitioning.

Drag any unwanted cards into the bin to delete them.

If you want fewer place values in the dock (e.g. you only want to show Tens and Ones), click on the ‘-’ button to the left or the right of the available places. This hides the outermost place. If you have hidden some places, ‘+’ buttons appear so that you can show them again when wanted.

Clicking ‘Reset’ undoes any changes you have made, returning the tool to its default state.