More, Less, Equal

Language and math skills interact. One skill that crosses that bridge is the ability to determine more than, less than and equal.

To assist in reminding my son of this concept we played a modified version of the card game, War, and played with Legos.

We took out the face cards for the War game. We left cards numbered 1 to 10. We split the remaining cards into two piles. The game was played like a typical card game of War, where the person who had the highest numbered card won the hand.  We were able to use the numbers, and items on the card, to decide who had more, less or if we had the same amount.  My son counted the cards that each of us won. He was able to tell me who had more cards, and therefore who won the game.

After the cards were put away, we stacked Legos to see how "tall"our amounts would be. This gave a visual and tangible representation of more, less and equal.

The idea of this game was prompted by my four year old. He grabbed the stack of cards, and asked to play a game.  He wanted to play with Legos at the end of the card game. It was a great opportunity to have him compare amounts, rote count and count items/one to one correspondence.