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Use the search filters below to return results. Keep an eye out for some of my top favorites-- my "BookSmart Picks"-- that are sure to entertain and educate your kids! And, many activities use common materials you likely have at home already. Look for entries marked with the "Common Items" icon to find activities that shouldn't require any purchase.
Two bugs, Flora and Ralph, have thirteen beans between them and try to devise a way to divide them evenly. But no matter how they divide them, they still have bean thirteen left over…
Two bugs, Flora and Ralph, have thirteen beans between them and try to devise a way to divide them evenly. But no matter how they divide them, they still have bean thirteen left over. They even invite others over to try to divide the beans evenly, but still have the one left over. This story is a good way to introduce the concept of remainders in division, as well as discussion of prime numbers and what that means in terms of division.
Appelt uses rhyming to describe the scene as the bats parade down the street. The bats are arranged in arrays, as the focus is on squaring numbers. The piccolos march two by two, the flautists three by three, and so on up to ten…
Appelt uses rhyming to describe the scene as the bats parade down the street. The bats are arranged in arrays, as the focus is on squaring numbers. The piccolos march two by two, the flautists three by three, and so on up to ten. The total number of bats in each section is large and highlighted on each page. All of the bats are totaled as well, with each of the sections shown on one full spread, with the addition problem shown below: 1 + 4 + 9 + 16 + 25 + 36 + 49 + 64 + 81 + 100 = 385. This would be a good starting point for discussing square numbers, as well as arrays for non-square numbers.
Perry the Penguin is trying to save enough clams to buy an ice scooter. The story follows him throughout the week as he earns some clams, spends some, and borrows some. A line graph shows…
Perry the Penguin is trying to save enough clams to buy an ice scooter. The story follows him throughout the week as he earns some clams, spends some, and borrows some. A line graph shows his clams going up and down as he keeps track each day, serving as a simple introduction to negative numbers. Children are not only given a clear context for negative numbers, but also get a good visual of negative and positive numbers through the line graph.
Similar to On Beyond a Million, this book begins with one and moves up through powers of ten, building up to googol. The focus here, though, is not as much on the powers of ten themselves, but on visualizing how large the numbers really are…
Similar to On Beyond a Million, this book begins with one and moves up through powers of ten, building up to googol. The focus here, though, is not as much on the powers of ten themselves, but on visualizing how large the numbers really are. The colorful illustrations of things like 1,000 scoops of ice cream, 100,000 marshmallows, and 1,000,000 dollars allow children to fully visualize the size of these numbers. While children cannot be shown how big a googol is, the author does a good job of helping them imagine it. “If you counted every grain of sand on all the world’s beaches, and every drop of water in all the oceans, that wouldn’t even be close to a googol.” The last page also gives a short history of googol, what the number is and where the name came from.
With illustrations by Stephen Kellogg, this is a fun book with some great, detailed pictures. The book compares a million, a billion, and a trillion in the same ways—with stacking kids, counting out loud, goldfish, and stars…
With illustrations by Stephen Kellogg, this is a fun book with some great, detailed pictures. The book compares a million, a billion, and a trillion in the same ways—with stacking kids, counting out loud, goldfish, and stars. It is a great way for kids to visualize the enormity of the numbers as well as gain a better understanding of how much bigger one billion is compared to one million and one trillion compared to one billion. Additionally, the back of the book explains how all of the facts were calculated (ex: using the height of an average kid). This book could also potentially be a launching point for learning about scientific notation, as it is all powers of ten.
Much like How Many Jelly Beans, Clements’ book helps children visualize one million. In this book, however, each page has a large number of dots, and all of the dots in the book total to one million. What makes this book interesting is that it is full of facts that use large numbers…
Much like How Many Jelly Beans, Clements’ book helps children visualize one million. In this book, however, each page has a large number of dots, and all of the dots in the book total to one million. What makes this book interesting is that it is full of facts that use large numbers. On each page there is a picture within the many dots on that page. One dot in the picture is circled, and at the bottom of the page there is a fact that corresponds to that dot’s number. For example, on the page where dot #1,860 is circled the fact included is that it takes 1,860 steps to get to the top of the Empire State Building. And at dot #300,000, the author writes that there are more than 300,000 different kinds of beetles that live on Earth. I like that this book still has a visualization piece, but then offers many different contexts in which one might see large numbers, helping kids to really understand the magnitude of the numbers included in the facts.
This large format book shows illustrations of jelly beans from ten beans up to one million beans. The illustrations are black and white except for the colorful jelly beans so they stand out quite well…
This large format book shows illustrations of jelly beans from ten beans up to one million beans. The illustrations are black and white except for the colorful jelly beans so they stand out quite well. There is a big fold out poster at the end to show what one million jelly beans looks like. It’s a great way to introduce big numbers since it helps with the visualization.
This fun book is great for proportional reasoning and use of ratios. Throughout the book, different scenarios are presented, showing what it would be like if you could hop like a frog, eat like a shrew, or flick your tongue like a chameleon. Mathematical and scientific explanations follow…
This fun book is great for proportional reasoning and use of ratios. Throughout the book, different scenarios are presented, showing what it would be like if you could hop like a frog, eat like a shrew, or flick your tongue like a chameleon. Mathematical and scientific explanations follow each scenario. Children can use the facts presented to calculate what they themselves are capable of doing. For example, they learn that if they could hop like a frog, then they could jump twenty times their body length. Children could also do research to find other animal facts that they can use proportions and ratios to attribute to themselves accurately.
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