Activities! Dog Show! Bigger, Better, Best Bedroom! Earth Day — Hooray! And Freda Stops a Bully
The Stuart J. Murphy Activities Newsletter comes out every other Wednesday, filled with selections from a vast and wonderful archive of Early Math & Early Childhood Ed activities.
Please tell your friends, colleagues, librarians & parents!
It’s FREE!
Hello Everybody!
This week’s I See I Learn book is Freda Stops a Bully, a story about dealing with bullying. Bullying is a serious issue, whether a child is being bullied, doing the bullying or witnessing bullying as a bystander.
Freda loves her new pink shoes. They are beautiful! But when she wears them to school and a boy teases her— “Funny Feet! Funny Feet!”—Freda feels terrible. Her mom, her friends and her teacher at Ready, Set Pre-K, Miss Cathy, all try to help. Scroll down to find out how Freda stops a bully! There’s a video and a free poster, too!
This week’s three featured MathStart stories are:
Henry the Fourth (ordinals — Good dog, Henry!)
Bigger, Better, Best! (area — Can you measure the area of your classroom?)
Earth Day — Hooray! (place value — Recycling, gardening and a video, too!)
For happier, healthier, more confident children!
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:
Henry the Fourth (ordinals)
It's "Dog Show Day" and the kids in the neighborhood have all gathered together to see four perfect pooches compete. Maxie's first, Baxter's second, Daisy's third, but will the stage-shy Henry the Fourth end up stealing the show?
Identifying order is essential for developing sequencing skills.
• Level 2, Kindergarten / Grade 1:
Bigger, Better, Best! (area)
Jill can't believe it. Her older sister Jenny and older brother Jeff are at it again, arguing over who's got the better backpack and better book. But their biggest battle is over who has the best bedroom in their new house. To measure the area of their windows, they use sheets of paper. Yet even though their windows are different shapes, they both need the same number of sheets—12—to cover the glass. Their windows have the exact same area! Sheets of newsprint come in handy for measuring floor space. Meanwhile, Jill's just happy that her little room is way down the hall.
Understanding that area is a two-dimensional measurement of space is a basic concept of geometry.
• Level 3, Grades 2 - 4:
Earth Day—Hooray! (place value)
Members of Maple Street Save-the-Planet Club are cleaning up Gilroy Park when Ryan has a brainstorm: Instead of throwing aluminum cans in the garbage, why not bring them to the Recycling Center and use the money to buy flowers to decorate the park for Earth Day? Mrs. Watson, the club's advisor, figures out that they're going to need 5,000 cans, so the kids start a big collection campaign at school. Cans are grouped in bags of 10, 100 and 1,000. Recycling facts are sprinkled throughout the illustrations.
Understanding place value is key to working easily with large numbers.
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.
20% off on book sets on the I See I Learn store!
Freda Stops a Bully (dealing with bullying)
Freda loves her new pink shoes. But when she wears them, a boy at school teases her. What can Freda do to make the bully stop?
Bullying is a serious issue, whether a child is being bullied, doing the bullying, or witnessing bullying as a bystander. Understanding what motivates the behavior can provide insights toward it resolution.
Let's all work together to stop bullying!
FREE PDF POSTER
Do you have a story or a question? Please send me an email!