Activities! Counting! Counting by 2s, 3s & 4s! Counting Coins! And (drumroll) a Parade!
Every other Wednesday, we post selections from our vast and wonderful archive of Early Math & Early Childhood Ed activities.
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Hello!
One the things I like best about books for young children is how many different things you can learn from a single story. My I See I Learn series for Pre-K / Kindergarten are divided into four domains:
Social skills
Emotional skills
Health & Safety skills
Cognitive skills.
Each of the 16 books focuses on a specific domain, but each story also teaches skills across all four domains.
This week’s featured book, Left, Right, Emma!, is about Emma learning how to tell left from right, a cognitive skill, so she can lead the parade for Grandparents’ Day at Ready, Set Pre-K. (btw, Grandparents’ Day is one of my favorite holidays!)
As you can see from the Span of Learning chart below, there actually are several cognitive skills being taught. There is also a social skill (“demonstrate engagement in learning”), an emotional skill (“persevere” — Emma’s practices a lot!), and a health & safety skill (“participate in physical activities”).
There are Span of Learning charts for all four domains on the I See I Learn website.
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This week’s featured MathStart books are all about counting:
Every Buddy Counts (counts)
Spunky Monkeys on Parade (counting by 2s, 3s & 4s)
The Penny Pot (counting coins)
Can you count how many other skills each story teaches?
You can always count me as your friend!
Stuart
Mathstart is a series of 63 storybooks organized into three levels for Pre-K through Grade 4. Each story teaches a different mathematical skill.
You can buy individual books, sets by level, or a complete library. Here is list of where to find MathStart books!
• Level 1, Pre-K/ Kindergarten:
Every Buddy Counts (counting)
When a little girl wakes up one morning feeling "crummy, yucky, very sad," she cheers herself up by counting all her friends—which include pets, playmates, neighbors and even older sisters.
Not only can counting make you feel better, it is an essential math skill.
• Level 2, Kindergarten / Grade 1:
Spunky Monkeys on Parade (counting by 2s, 3s & 4s)
The "Monkey Day" parade is a very big deal. The crowd loves to watch the Monkey Cyclists who cycle two by two (2, 4, 6, 8…). They're followed by the Monkey Tumblers, who travel in groups of three (3, 6, 9, 12…). Finally, there is the Monkey Band lined up four across (4, 8, 12, 16…).
Counting by 2s, 3s and 4s is called skip-counting and is an important step in the development of multiplication skills.
• Level 3, Grades 2 - 4:
The Penny Pot (counting coins)
At stake: two free tickets to the All-Star Game. And all you have to do is guess the correct number of jelly beans in a jar at the Planet Toys store. One particularly smart boy has an idea: Why guess when you can estimate? He plays a game with his buddy as they head over to the store on the bus. With four people per row, 10 rows, and a few folks standing in the aisle, he estimates that there are 43 people on the bus. "I didn't even need a pencil," he boasts.
Knowing how to estimate is an essential skill that helps children determine approximate totals as well as check the reasonableness of their solutions to problems.
I See I Learn is a series of 16 stories that follow the adventures of the children in Miss Cathy’s class at Ready, Set Pre-K in See-and-Learn City (see map).
Each story focuses on a different social, emotional, health & safety and cognitive skill important for success in school and in life. For Pre-K / Kindergarten.
Left, Right, Emma! (knowing left and right)
Emma loves to march around her house. She is sooooo excited to lead a march at school. But how will Emma know when to turn left and when to turn right?
Understanding basic directions allows young children to follow instructions, give others directions, and develop strong spatial sense.
Let’s go! Left! Right!
Do you have a story or a question? Please send me an email!