Make Math Informal and Connected

Tonight I was sitting down with my 6 year old son doing his math homework.  One of the last problems was 38 < ___ and ___< 60.  At first he put 38 < 39 and then he thought for a moment and said, “Can it be ANY number that is bigger than 38?” and I told him it could and he got a smile on his face, erased the 39 and wrote 100.  Then when he got to the next problem he wrote 1 < 60, looked at me and smiled.  I could just tell that the concept was starting to click in his head.  But then, the coolest thing happened…he wanted to keep doing some math!  He flipped the papers back to the first page that had a 100s chart and said I needed to guess his favorite number.

So I saw an opportunity to make it even more mathematical.  He let me and his 4 year old sister guess numbers on the chart but then I asked him to tell us if his ‘favorite number’ was Less Than or Greater Than the numbers we guessed.  It was a small change to his “game” but made it even more mathematical yet in an informal way that connected to something he was interested in.