We’ve been playing this game to help us learn about more and less than.  It’s from the Math Their Way book and also the Developing Number Concept book by Kathy Richardson.

Basically, the children start with 10 cubes (or 20 if you want to make it harder, 5 if you want it to be easier).  They put the stack of cubes behind their back and say together, “1, 2, 3 Break!” and they break their stack in two parts.  They then choose which stack to present out front to their partner.  They hold them up to compare:

The person on the left would say, “so and so, I have less cubes than you” and then the person on the right would say, “so and so, I have more cubes than you”.  They would take turns spinning the more/less than spinner to determine who gets to keep the other persons cubes plus their own.  If it lands on more, the person with the most cubes would get all the cubes showing and likewise if the spinner landed on less, the person with the fewer cubes would keep both stacks.  The kids play until one person has no cubes.  They then re-stack their cubes and start again if time permits.

Kristen 🙂