Activities! Firefighters! Coyotes! Kangaroos! AND Percy Gets Upset!
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.
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Hello, Everybody!
Percy’s mom, like moms everywhere, is amazing. Poor Percy is having a bad day. First he can’t find his shoe. Then he has to go home for dinner when he still wants to play with Freda. Then he doesn’t want to eat the lovely dinner his dad made. (Percy’s dad, like dads everywhere, is pretty cool, too). And if that weren’t enough, his parents tell him it was time to sleep when he wants to hear another funny story. How unfair!
When Percy Gets Upset, this week’s featured I See I Learn book, boy does he get upset! Percy’s wonderfully patient parents show him how he can calm himself down.
Learning how to deal with frustration is an important emotional skill. Developing strategies for managing anger, such as taking a deep breath and counting to ten, helps children calm down and feel better. They worked for Percy and they work for me, too, when I get frustrated! The story is also available in Spanish: Percy se enoja.
And now it’s time to count to three, which is the number this week’s featured MathStart books!
3 Little Firefighters (sorting)
Coyotes All Around (rounding)
Too Many Kangaroo Things to Do (multiplying)
Yours, who also loves to count in Spanish (uno, dos, tres…)
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:
3 Little Firefighters (sorting)
It's a parade day for the 3 little firefighters and they have to look their best. But their coats are missing buttons and their belly buttons show! Time to get out the button box. Each coat will need 4 buttons. They try to sort them by color, and then by shape, but they can't make enough sets. What if they try sorting by size instead? Ink Spot the dog wants to help!
Sorting by attributes lays the groundwork for understanding number patterns and identifying geometric shapes.
• Level 2, Kindergarten / Grade 1:
Coyotes All Around (rounding)
It's another fine desert day for the counting coyotes: Clumsy, Clever, Cool, Careful and Little One. Clumsy thinks there must be hundreds of roadrunner birds, but Clever thinks that's a little high and encourages the other four coyotes to take a count. When it comes time to add up the totals, Clever says she can do in it her head by using rounding. Instead of adding 21+12+17+8, Clever rounds the numbers and adds 20+10+20+10, estimating the total will be 60. The actual total is 58, so she's pretty close. The coyotes then try counting lizards and grasshoppers. Clever's fast estimating amazes her friends. The story is also filled with lots of coyote factoids.
Rounding and then computing are necessary skills for making sound estimates.
• Level 3, Grades 2 - 4:
Too Many Kangaroo Things To Do! (multiplying)
Poor Kangaroo! It's his birthday but everybody's too busy to play with him. Emu has to bake one cake (1 x 1), spread two colors of frosting (1 x 2), decorate the cake with three flowers (1 x 3) and add four big candles (1 x 4). That's 10 Emu things to do when you add them up. The two platypuses, three koalas and four dingoes are likewise occupied with multiple tasks. Multiply each group's tasks, then add the totals together and it equals…a party!
By learning how to multiply by 1, 2, 3, and 4, children are introduced to multiplication, one of the four basic arithmetic operations.
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!
Percy Gets Upset (dealing with frustration )
Percy sometimes gets upset. He crosses his arms, stamps his feet, and scowls. But when he learns how to calm down, he has fun again!
Developing strategies for managing anger, such as taking a deep breath and counting to ten, helps children calm down and feel better.
When you’re not upset, you have more fun!
FREE PDF POSTER
Percy se enoja (como las frustracions)
A veces Percy se enoja. Cruza sus brazos, da patadas con sus pies, y pone mala cara. Pero cuando aprende como calmarse, ¡puede divertirse más otra vez!
Desarrollando las estrategias para calmarse, como respirar profundo y contar hasta diez, ayuda a los niños a calmarse y sentirse mejor.
Cuando no estás enojado, ¡puedes divertirse más!
FREE PDF POSTER
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