real world examples of numbers with 3 decimal places
dxjones: How about measuring distance using the metric system.
How tall are you? How long is your hair? (in metres)
How big is this room?  How far is it to your house?They should be able to convert from being 127 cm tall
to being 1.27 metres tall, and then be able to run around
measuring things that are a fraction of a metre
and multiple metres.A good concept to add would be understanding things in multiples of ten.  For instance, once they know it is 1.5 kilometres (1500 m) from their house to the school, they can use their understanding of decimals to tell them it would take roughly 1000 kids like them laid end-to-end on the sidewalk to cover the distance from their house to their school. ... They know this just from shifting the decimal point when comparing 1500 m to 1.27 m.  If you are lucky, they will even think about this lesson on their walk home!(roughly 1000 is a better estimate than 100 or 10,000
and in many situations, that kind of estimate is good enough)