Read the book "Ten Little Rubber Ducks" by Eric Clark with your students. The story talks about the fates of ten toy ducks using ordinal numbers. The children can create their own rubber duck puppets to reenact the story and help make the connection between the words and their positions. To make the puppets, have your students cut a duck shape out of paper or foam, glue on a googly eye, and tape a Popsicle stick to the back of the duck to form a handle.
The story "The Mitten" by Jan Brent makes use of ordinal numbers by telling the story of a lost mitten, and the animals who find it. A mole climbs in first, followed by a rabbit, and so on. Provide a sheet printed with pictures of all of the animals in the story for each child, as well as a paper mitten cutout. Have the kids color and cut out each animal, and then have them place each creature in the mitten as you read the story aloud.
Create a blank comic strip, and label each panel with First, Second and Third. Talk about morning routines: waking up, brushing your teeth, combing your hair, and eating breakfast. Have each student draw the activities they perform in the correct order.
If you'd like to teach your students about ordinal numbers near the holiday season, the classic "12 Days of Christmas" song makes an excellent project. Assign each student to draw one of the elements of the song: partridge, doves, rings, and so on, but assign them out of order. When the students are finished drawing, have them sing the song together, come up and place their drawing on the board in the correct order.