Children's Math Book: The Button Box

Button, button, who's got the button? Yesterday, I gave my 5yo a container of buttons and a bunch of tiny plastic containers. Left to his own devices, he prepared "snacks" for me; I got to choose the color of "snack" I wanted.

After our delicious purple and pink snack, we settled in to read a favorite book, The Button Box. In the story, a child sorts buttons from Grandma's button box, using a wide variety of categories, including looking at where the buttons may have come from: sparkly buttons from kings, leather ones from cowboy shirts, tiny buttons from old fashioned shoes, and shiny buttons from uniforms.  I've always thought this book a must-have for preK-kindergarten! ;) You might also read Grandma's Button Box, a Math Matters book.

Words + Math + Seasons = Mathematickles!

Want to tickle your math bone? Try reading Mathematickles, a "collection of poems written in the form of mathematical problems and grouped according to seasonal themes." A few examples from the book:

crisp air

shadows tall

+ cat's thick coat

signs of fall

pumpkin - seeds + face = jack-o'-lantern

Using Betsy Franco's poems as models, today we wrote some of our own poems. We first composed these together:

cool air

birds sing

+ flower buds

signs of spring

hot weather

squirt gun

+ popsicle mustache

summer fun

To make the writing process more manageable for independent work, I set up a few templates.

For a poem describing a rainy day:

descriptive phrase

descriptive phrase that ends with ay

+ descriptive phrase

rainy day

Summer:

descriptive phrase

descriptive phrase that ends with un

+ descriptive phrase

summer fun

Or poems to "solve"...

children

-bedtime

(tell what this equals)

This would be a great book and activity to explore descriptive writing, poetry, seasons or math symbols. It would also make a nice "welcome summer" lesson!

Fraction Creatures & Creative Writing

After this lesson and reading Picture Pie, we continued our exploration of fractions and art by delving into creative writing. I suggested that my son invent any kind of imaginary creature.  Consider what imaginary creature you might find in the:

• jungle
• forest
• ocean depths
• desert
• realms of outer space...on Mars
• swamp
• living in the sewers of a big city

His instructions:

1. Pick a location and make an imaginary creature using circle fractions.

2. Write about your creature. Consider:

• habitat
• what it eats
• friends/enemies
• special characteristics
• physical description
• lifespan
• name and its meaning

3. If using a standard circle (i.e. all the circles were congruent before cutting into fractional shapes), pretend that just for today, the area of a circle = 1. Calculate the total area of your  creature. 

Here's his project:

The Seasaur
by J, age 8

Seasaur lives by rocky and coral places in the Antarctic waters. He eats krill and shrimp and plankton if he has to. His enemies are only humans. His friends are penguins, all whales, crabs and fish.

The Seasaur can grow up to 25-30 feet long, almost as big as Triceratops. Its spikes can grow up to three and four feet long. The blue spikes are only a warning but the red ones are poisonous. He can make the poison go away and has poisonous blood so no animal will eat him, only humans that don't know he's poisonous. His teeth are square, not spiky, because he eats shrimp and krill. He has special lungs and gills so he can go on land and water. Seasaur can live up to 40 years but normally lives 30 years.

Area of Seasaur: 4 5/8 circles.

***My inspiration for this lesson comes from one of my favorite people and mentors, Roger Kukes. He's the one who taught me to think in creative, artistic ways. I love his book, Drawing in the Classroom.

I'm linking up at stART.

Children's Math Book Review: Picture Pie (& Fraction/Art Lesson!)

The boys and I found a book that we absolutely love. Ed Emberley's Picture Pie is a circle drawing book. He shows you how to divide circles into fractional pie pieces to create designs, flowers, birds, animals, fish, clowns and a whole host of fun pictures.

We spent hours exploring the book and making our own pictures this morning. Here's how I applied it to two different levels:

5 year old...I traced circles which he cut.  He then folded the circles in half--sometimes in half again to make quarters--and cut them to build parts of his pictures. He made page after page which he said was for his "picture book." Although I could have given him precut shapes, I wanted him to practice cutting and think about what it meant to fold pieces in half. He loved this and would have continued past the several hours we did it. I finally shooed them outside. The visual/spatial practice was valuable. I've watched much older children struggle to figure out how/where to place shapes to replicate something they see.

8 year old...He made his own circles by tracing plastic cups. He cut his own fractional parts and replicated pictures in the book. He had a great time using various colored paper to create different kinds of birds. He numbered them and put the answers (to bird type) on the back. I then had him label the fractional parts that he used for each section of the bird.

We will be spending a lot more time with this book. Later this week I'll post a follow up lesson. (It's here...creative writing addition!) I also want to show the boys Ed Emberley's Picture Pie Two.

Both books provide a great jumping off point for studying shapes or fractions. It'd also make an excellent gift!

I'll be linking up this week at:
stART
Craft Schooling Sunday
Childhood 101
Chocolate, Drool and Kisses
Preschool Corner
What My Child is Reading


Disclaimer: I received nothing for this review. If you order from Amazon through this blog, all commissions go toward foster care through Grace and Hope at no additional cost to you. THANK YOU!

Magic Mirror Tricks: Exploring Symmetry

Two oldie-but-goodie books give children some fun exposure to symmetry. The Magic Mirror Book and Magic Mirror Tricks show incomplete illustrations--sometimes halves of objects, especially in the tricks book, hence the link to symmetry--that children can complete by holding a small mirror up next to the picture. The books, though out-of-print, can be found very cheaply.

To continue the symmetry lesson, I drew a light pencil line down the center of a piece of paper and asked my son to make a pattern block pattern on one side of the line only. He traced the blocks to make a new symmetry puzzle which he then completed by finishing the design on the other side of the line. He quickly discovered it was easier to trace blocks if he used the magnetic blocks on our new cookie sheet math board so the pieces didn't move.

I then asked him to make a riddle to give a hint as to the picture he'd made. He wrote one about a lion, the second about a hyena.

It would be fun to further extend the lesson by making his own Magic Mirror book. Sounds like a good summer project!

Polygon Song & Lessons

Want to do a little polygon exploration?

1. Select a few ideas from our past polygon lessons.

2. Read Marilyn Burns' book, The Greedy Triangle.

3. Watch the following video. It's a perfect extension to The Greedy Triangle. This time, however, it's a square complaining about his life. Use the video with the book to do some "Paired Book" exploration...in this case, paired book and video exploration! :)

Children's Math Book Review: How Big is a Million? (Penguins!)

Although our penguin unit is long over, I couldn't resist picking up one more related book. Pipkin, a young penguin, wants to know How Big is a Million? He finds ten fish, 100 penguins, and 1,000 snowflakes, but he cannot find a million. Finally, his mother takes him outside to look at the starry night. In a pocket in the back of the book, the reader finds a poster depicting exactly one million stars. In contrast to some other "million" books where the quantity is distributed throughout the book, this picture allows the reader a glimpse of a million of something in one shot. Sweet book for exploring the concept of one million. 

The only thing I wasn't sure about...  Does the book actually show 1,000 snowflakes? I know it shows 10, 100, and a million, but I wasn't sure about 1,000. A friend of mine found some information from the author, explaining how the book developed. It leaves me to assume that all the illustrations are accurately counted.

And I have to post one more penguin math link. You'll know my sense of humor when I say this song cracked me up:

Keywords: million lesson plan, penguin lesson plan

Check out more math links at the Math Monday Blog Hop.

Double Pennies for a Week or Take a Dollar?

Here's another great extension for a paired reading of the books, One Grain of Rice and The King's Chessboard, two books that explore the concept of doubling.

I asked my son which he would rather have:

1. a penny today that would then double each day for a week.
2. one dollar.

I made a handout for him to record his thought using words, pictures and/or numbers.

Print the handout and try it with your kids. I'd love to know what methods they used to solve the problem.



P.S. After he chose "A", I gave him the $1.27. He eagerly put it in the coin box he made in Sunday School and then put it in the offering at church. His idea. Happy sigh.

Using Paired Books to Explore Math Concepts: Doubling

As a once-upon-a-time English education major, I'm intrigued with the idea of using paired books to explore math as explained in New Visions for Linking Literature and Mathematics. When I say "paired books," I'm thinking of books that could be compared and contrasted to consider any number of concepts--character, setting, plot...and, yes, math!

With that in mind, I read my son One Grain of Rice and The King's Chessboard, two books which tell stories of a rich royalty figure who, feeling indebted to a commoner (a poor village girl, a wiseman), agrees to pay the "paltry sum" of a single grain of rice...to be doubled each day for a period of days (a month, the squares on a chessboard.)

After reading the two books, we discussed ways in which they are similar and different. While the discussion alone was valuable, this time I also had my son record comparisons in a "Flip Flap with 3 Flaps book" (link gives you a basic template), with things unique to each book recorded under the left and right flaps and things that they hold in common recorded under the center flap, labeled "Both."

While we discussed a variety of topics, I'll highlight some of the math:

• For my 8yo, the obvious: "both think that the amount will be small but it's big."
• Measurement: we considered how the rice is measured in each book. In One Grain of Rice, it appears that the grains are literally counted out although the book never specifies how. In The King's Chessboard, the Weigher decides on day 12 that 2,048 grains of rice is equal to an ounce; from that day on, he continues with weight...ounces to pounds to tons.
• I asked my son to consider which character actually received the most rice, the village girl who received rice for a month or the wiseman who was to receive rice for each square of a chessboard but stopped early when the chessboard was only half filled.

Tricia left a comment noting that this folktale is also told in The Rajah's Rice. (On my Amazon list it goes!) You might also compared these books with other doubling stories: Two of Everything, The 512 Ants on Sullivan Street.

Are you interested in learning about more paired book options for math?

Tomorrow I'll share another math lesson based on these two books.

Sea Squares and Snap Cubes

Today we continued exploration of growing patterns using snap cubes and the book, Sea Squares. The book uses a rhyming format to investigate square numbers in things you find in or near the ocean. I first read the book to both my boys. Then I showed my 8yo son the beginning of a pattern, designed to go with pages of the book.

On the page with "1 spout, 1 whale and 1 strong tail" I showed him arrangement #1, a single cube.

On "2 white gulls, with 2 eyes each, have 4 bright eyes to watch the beach" I made arrangement #2, shown below in a square of 4 pink cubes.

The next page continues with "3 clowns with frowny faces have 9 stripes in fishy places." I asked my son to build what he thought arrangement #3 in this pattern might look like. At first he made the arrangement shown below, a row of 4 tiles on top of a row of 5 tiles. I asked him to show me where he saw 9. He pointed to all the tiles. I asked him where he saw the 3. He looked at it for a bit, stumped. So we went back a page  (to the gulls and my pink arrangement #2) and I asked him where he saw 4, and then where he saw 2. He could show me that 4 was all the tile and that 2 was both along the sides (vertical) and across the top/bottom (horizontal.)

Then he got an "ah-ha" look on his face and revised his arrangement #3 to make the blue square shown below.

We continued with the 4th arrangement, "4 seals are quite complete with 16 flippery feet" and he built a 4x4 square.

And then on to the 5th arrangement, "Those 5 lilies of the ocean have 25 fronds in motion" in which he built a 5x5 square.

The text continues through a 10x10 square, but he thoroughly understood the pattern before that point, so he just built a couple more arrangements and then described what the next few would look like. "8x8 would have 64 squares," etc...

Tomorrow I'll describe how we continued the discussion of square numbers using snap cubes.

Inchworm, Inchworm...Measuring the Marigolds? Snow?

Today we're mostly measuring SNOW...a first for my little guy, home from China less than two years. But we also took a little time to measure with INCHWORMS.

We began by using the free lesson, "Making Inchworm Rulers" from "D2 Measurement: Length in U.S. Customary Units" found here. The lesson asked us to look at a ruler and identify what we knew about it. We then read a little bit about "inchworms," also included with the lesson. I couldn't resist taking a few moments to watch the classic Sesame Street version of the song, Inchworm. Then we listened and sung along with a class. (Wouldn't it be fun to do a puppet show for that song??)

My guys then made inchworm rulers (see lesson...note that you need to be careful in how your copy machine automatically reduces...I had to increase the % to get the inchworms the right size...a math lesson in and of itself!) We read Inchworm and a Half, which was a good extension for my 8yo who is interested in fractions. Then we read Inch by Inch and measured each animal using our inchworm rulers just as the inchworm in the book measured. Lastly, we are using the "Inchworm Ruler Record Sheet" (pdf included) to discover things around the house that are shorter than 1 foot, exactly 1 foot, and longer than 1 foot.

At the moment, they're back outside, measuring snow. :)

Head Strings: Measuring with String & Tile

We continued our lessons on measurement. The boys enjoyed Inch by Inch, in which an inchworm measures a variety of birds (a flamingo's neck, a toucan's beak, a heron's leg...) only to be told by a nightingale, "Measure my song or I'll eat you for breakfast." The inchworm "measures," moving farther and farther away as the bird sings, eventually inching out of sight.

We then continued a little measurement of our own...

Following the free Math Learning Center lesson**, "Head Strings," I measured the circumference of my head with a piece of yard, lay it on the floor, put 5 colored tiles next to it,  and asked my son to estimate how many tiles would be needed for the total length. He guessed 25 by looking at the first group of tile and explaining it would probably take 5 of those to finish the string. I put tile along about half the string and asked if he wanted to revise his estimate. With 11 tile now along the string, he changed his estimate to 22. He measured the string with tile, finding that it took 23.

 I removed the tile and placed a book next to the string, asking him to use what he knew about the string to estimate the length of the book. He estimated and measured, coming within one tile. I gave him a copy of "Head String Record Sheet," (free pdf) and let him estimate and measure various objects around the house using his own head string and tile. Lastly, we'll be considering how many tile are needed to measure the length of a ruler and reflect on what that says about the size of each tile. (Tile are 1" square.)

My 4yo measured for a bit and then made a train and house with his felt shapes.

**To access the free lesson, including blackline pdfs, go here and download "D2 Measurement: Length in U.S. Customary Units."

How Big is a Giant's Foot?

Following our lesson on "How Big is a Foot?" we decided to consider slightly BIGGER feet...

We began by reading Jim and the Beanstalk, a slightly different version of the traditional Jack tale. Both boys enjoyed hearing about how Jim helped the giant by measuring him for new glasses, new teeth (!) and a new wig. We then continued with a little giant measuring of our own.

Using Math Learning Center's free lesson, "Measuring Length in Giant Feet," I constructed a giant foot and asked my son to compare the length of my foot from yesterday's lesson to the new giant foot. He determined that about 3 of my feet equaled one giant foot and told me that the giant foot was then about a yard long. (To access the free lesson, including blackline pdfs, go here and download "D2 Measurement: Length in U.S. Customary Units.") He lay a yardstick on the giant foot to confirm. He estimated, then measured, various things around our house (including his brothers!) in giant feet and recorded it on the record sheet (included in the lessons). Before I set him loose to measure, I asked him, "What kinds of things would be hard to measure with the giant's foot?" He replied, "Anything very small." So he looked for large things to measure.

As big brother was measuring with the giant foot, little brother (4) pulled out paper, traced his flip-flop, cut it out, and began doing measurements of his own. All his idea! So they measured a few things with the small feet as well, considering how different the results could be with different sized feet.

We ended with a reading of a 2-sided book with two points-of-view, Jack and the Beanstalk and the Beanstalk Incident. One side tells the story from the goose's p.o.v. (favoring the giant!) while the other side tells Jack's story in the traditional way.