Big, bigger, biggest – talk about comparisons

What you need

• A place for a walk where you can collect leaves, sticks or stones 

The steps

• Tell your child that you're going to collect some leaves (or sticks or stones) on your walk.  
• Ask them to look around and see if they can find one.  
• When they’ve found a leaf, ask, “Now can you find a bigger one?”  
• Collect a few then put then stop and put them all down, ask your child if they can put them in order from smallest to biggest.  
• Chat about the different sizes as they put their collection in order.  

Benefits for your child

• Talking about size and comparison is a cognitive skill as well as a language skill. They're learning to connect the meaning of these words to real life situations. 
• Being able to describe the differences between items sizes is an important foundational skill for maths learning later in life. 

Building on 

• Understanding the language we use to compare size can be confusing at first, if your child finds it tricky to notice the difference between items help them find ones which are very different - so a much bigger stick and a tiny twig - to start the conversation.
• As they get