PacMan >, <, =, and Sequencing

During our math time, we also wanted to touch on greater than, less than, equal to, and sequencing numbers. Before getting to those, we needed to revisit place value to build upon that concept. We had numbers 0-9 written on construction paper cards and 'ones,' 'tens,' 'hundreds,' (a paper comma) 'thousands,' and so on, written on different color construction paper cards. We had the kids place the place value cards in the right order on the floor and we would either call out a number and they would have to figure out which number went where or we would put a number out and they would have to read it to us. Once we had that down fairly well, we were able to move on to other skills based on place value.

 We had talked about having used the alligator and PacMan in the past, and it hit me. We could do all of the above with PacMan and his little ghosts! I grabbed the construction paper and started cutting. I made two PacMan cutouts - one with his mouth cut out, and one plain yellow circle with an equal sign on it. I also made a stack of ghosts in different colors. On each ghost I wrote all kinds of numbers, many of which contained the same digits in different orders (place values).

We were pretty pleased with the way each of these activities turned out. When we used fun manipulatives, we always had 100% participation! I would definitely use all of our math ideas in a classroom setting. They were easy to make, and would be easy to maintain if laminated.