For last Friday’s Math-Play-Day I introduced the greater than/less than symbols to Mira. I made symbol cards that included a “gobblin’ gator” on the corners of the symbol to show how the gator’s mouth always gobbles the larger number. He’s a very hungry gator of course.
I used construction paper and drew on the symbols and cut out an alligator I had printed using clip art. I debated on using a larger gator and making his mouth be the actual symbol but decided against it. I want my girls to get used to seeing the symbol in its natural form without all the cute add-ons.
On the back of each card I took another sheet of construction paper to line the back since the permanent marker had bled through; and I wrote out the words for each symbol and then laminated the set.
For her introduction activity we used the cards with our favorite math manipulative- our c-rods. Mira would take a moment to place the rods and correct card to form a “number sentence”.
Then she would self-check her work by flipping over the card and reading out the sentence: 2 is less than 5.
Yesterday we expanded on this lesson and included the use of pink candy corn- and as you can imagine it went over very well. I’ll blog about that extended lesson soon!
Enjoy your weekend everyone!
Very cool! We did something similar but called it “Hungry Guy”: http://teachingmybabytoread.blog.com/2011/09/23/math-for-two-year-olds-greater-thanless-than/
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