The ability to compare numbers with ease is crucial to understanding the relationship between numbers, also called number sense. The abstract nature of number sense makes extra practice crucial. This guided lesson helps kindergarteners to learn this skill with targeted instruction and engaging exercises. Further opportunities for practice can be found in the comparing numbers worksheets suggested to go along with this lesson.

This lesson is a continuation of place value practice, and offers more instruction on identifying tens and ones in 2-digit numbers. Once first graders are able to quickly identify place value they are then able to understand on a deeper level what larger numbers actually mean. This is crucial for the math fluency that will support higher-level concepts in the later grades.