Activities! Sequencing, Adding & Negative Numbers (with Fishy Treats!) Plus, Happy, Healthy Ajay!
Every other Wednesday, we post selections from our vast and wonderful archive of Early Math & Early Childhood Ed activities.
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Hello!
We’ve got a great line up for the newsletter this week! Rabbit is having a pajama party. I love pajama parties! There’s a trip to the circus. And Perry the Penguin sings a toe tapping song about negative numbers. I bet you could sing along!
Our three featured MathStart stories are:
Rabbit’s Pajama Party (sequencing)
Animals on Board (adding)
Less Than Zero (negative numbers)
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Over in See-and-Learn City, our featured I See I Learn story, Happy, Healthy Ajay!, is about learning healthy habits. Between all those veggies and exercises (running after Percy counts!) he’s in fabulous shape. Look at that carrot on his t-shirt! Well done, Ajay!
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Visual learning is an integral part of all my books because we are wired to take in visual information—illustrations, graphs, symbols, charts, photos. We are fluent in the language of images, even young children. I use stories because we all love stories.
Telling a story through pictures, words and, for MathStart books, math, is a powerful combination. Each “language” reinforces the others. Mathematical skills, health & safety skills, social and emotional skills are important not only for success in school, but also in life.
Now, let’s get to those fun activities!
Your friend,
Stuart
* For my friends in the Boston, mark your calendars! I will be at Beacon Hill Books on January for a presentation on my latest book, Show and Tell! Great Graphs and Smart Charts. More details coming soon!
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
Rabbit’s Pajama Parties (sequencing)
Rabbit throws the best sleep-over parties! There's pizza, hot fudge sundaes, sleeping bags, scary stories and more. It’s fun to read about, too. Then you do a sequencing game: What happened first? Then next? And after that?
Sequencing is a foundational concept in math, and also for story comprehension.
• Level 2, Kindergarten / Grade 1:
Animals on Board (adding)
Wow! It's a caravan of trucks, each carrying an exotic load. There are three tigers on the first truck, followed by two more on the next truck. How many tigers in all? Then come trucks filled with different numbers of swans, frogs, horses and even pandas. How many are there of each animal? And where are they headed? And what's hidden under the tarp of driver Jill's extra-wide truck?
Simple addition equations help children to understand basic arithmetical operations.
• Level 3, Grades 2 - 4:
Less Than Zero (negative numbers)
It is so much fun to be a penguin—especially when you can swirl around on your very own ice scooter. Perry really wants one, but they cost 9 clams and he doesn't have a clam to his name. Then mom pays him 4 clams to trim the ice in front of their house. Perry decides to make a chart to track his savings. So far, so good! But then he goes to the Ice Circus with Fuzzy and it costs 5 clams. Fuzzy lends him the extra clam and now Perry is in debt and has to mark his chart at "-1." When Baldy loans him 2 clams for a Fishy Float, the total dips even further, to "-3." Will Perry be able to climb out of negative number territory, pay back his friends, and make enough money for a scooter? Good thing there's always plenty of snow to shovel!
The introduction of negative numbers extends a child's knowledge of the number system and is an important concept in algebra.
Perry is a star! Really! And also a “whole waddle of fun!” His story is featured in the hit show: The Main Street Kids’ Club: A MathStart Musical! It’s a toe-tapper…
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.
Happy, Healthy Ajay! (healthy habits)
Ajay wants to be strong, so he can run fast with his friends. See how eating healthy foods and getting lots of exercise helps Ajay feel great—and run fast!
Learning how to eat good foods and engaging in active play help children to develop healthy habits that will serve them well throughout their lives. Staying fit and eating nourishing foods have benefits in the classroom, too. When children are healthy, they can better focus on learning.
Be healthy! It's a smart thing to do.
Do you have a story or a question? Please send me an email!